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Paimtop

The journal for Psion Series 3 and.3a users

Issue 3, Volume 1 May / June 1995

News, reviews, gossip, feature articles, programming,
letters, hints & tips, tutorials and more...

...60 pages of up-to-date information
on your favourite PALMTOP computer!

Editorial
Spreading the word...

Palmtop News
Rumours and forthcoming attractions in the Series 3/3a world

Readers’ Letters
More of your comments and gripes

A Closer Look

Some quick reviews of the latest new products

Macros on the Series 3a
An introduction to the power and flexibility of the macro

Money, Money, Money!

Steven Shone reflects on his favourite software...

Programmers’ Workshop
More OPL wisdom from Andrew Baldwin

Living with the 3Fax

Everything you ever wanted to know about Psion’s own fax modem

The Emulation Game
Pete Sipple tells how to use a PC emulator with your Series 3 or 3a

“On The Net”

Pete’s regular roundup of Internet gossip

Something to DRAW on...

A look at some of the numerous drawing packages available for the S3/3a

Hints & Tips

More efficiency boosters for your palmtop

Paimtop

The journal for Psion Series 3 and 3a users

Special thanks for this issue go to Joe Odukoya at Psion for kindly supplying copies of
SoundMaster and ODE.

Thanks also to all the contributors whose names appear within the magazine, particularly
Andrew Baldwin for his regular programming articles and Pete Sipple for his numerous
contributions and endless help and encouragement on the project. Also not forgetting my
girlfriend, Rosemary, for so diligently proofreading the entire content of the magazine.

All requests for subscriptions or back issues and any comments or criticisms regarding the
content of PALMTOP should be directed to the editor at the following address:

Steve Clack alternatively, telephone or fax on +44 (0)1869 249287
25 Avocet Way
Bicester

Oxon OX6 OYN or:
ENGLAND

or: e-mail sclack@cix.compulink.co.uk

100602.3723@compuserve.com

Submissions

Any contributions of material published within the pages of PALMTOP (excluding ‘On The
Net’) will earn the author one free issue added to their subscription. If you wish to write
feature articles for the magazine then please contact the editor to discuss your ideas. Any
articles over 1000 words in length will earn one year’s extension to the author’s subscrip-
tion, or a minimum payment of £20 (or foreign equivalent).

Back issues of PALMTOP are always available at £4 each within the UK, £5 each elsewhere.
Just send payment in the usual way, stating which issues you require.

Subscriptions

PALMTOP is available by subscription only from the address given above, price £24 within
the UK, £27 in Europe and £33 worldwide. Price covers 6 issues and all postage (and airmail
costs for European/worldwide subscriptions). VAT is not payable on PALMTOP.

Payment for subscriptions or back issues can be made by cheque or Money Order (payable
to ‘PALMTOP’) in UK FUNDS ONLY. Payments can also be made using VISA, MASTERCARD,
DELTA, ACCESS and SWITCH cards. Please call, fax, post or e-mail your card details.

| General

PALMTOP acknowledges that some of the names referred to within the magazine are regis-
tered trademarks.

Editorial

t's been another wild couple of

months. Subscriptions have more

than trebled since the last issue, and
we now have readers in more than 20
countries spanning five continents.

Palmtop is also now produced using
QuarkxPress™ desktop publishing soft-
ware, rather than the ‘budget’ package
used to lay out the first two issues.
Although issue 3 looks barely different
from the last two, | intend to gradually
refine the appearance of the whole
magazine in terms of both typography
and the inclusion of more attractive
graphics and photographs.

Palmtop must constantly improve in
order to grow, and you can expect many
positive changes over the coming
months. Planned improvements include
regular articles for the less experienced
user, more in-depth how-to articles,
more comprehensive news on the latest
shareware offerings, a look at the best
sources of Psion-related information and
services around the world, plus other
regular features. If you have your own
ideas on how you wish Palmtop to evolve
then please get in touch.

Moving away from the subject of
‘Palmtop’s progress’, the magazine has
naturally caused me to become more
entrenched in the ‘Psion scene’, and I’ve
been perpetually amazed by the level of

enthusiasm for the Series 3/3a shown
from everyone involved. | am now begin-
ning to believe that a sizeable part of the
wildfire spread of the $3/3a comes from
the teachings of its disciples, i.e. from
existing users ‘spreading the word’. There
will always be a degree of this phenom-
enon with any product, but the genuine
keenness shown by the average Psion
user when describing or demonstrating
his/her machine is destined to make a
real impression on the people in contact
with such evangelists. How many times
has someone shown a vague interest in
your Psion, only to be treated to a full
and impassioned lesson on ‘all the
reasons why they really must buy one’.

Perhaps some if this enthusiasm stems
from the Series 3 being one of the first
incarnations of a truly toteable machine
to be sophisticated enough to make it
genuinely and unequivocally useful for
the average user. Perhaps the palmtop
computer is only now beginning to earn
itself some real credibility. For sure
there’s never been a better time to own
a palmtop, and the situation will
continue to improve as the technology of
these little marvels pushes relentlessly
forwards. These are exciting times.

Steve Clack - Editor

Paimtop News
The latest hot gossip on what’s _
happening in the Psion world

1 & 2Mb 3a’s in short supply

Reports of difficulties in obtaining the
new 1 & 2 megabyte Series 3a’s are only
too common at the moment, with some
suppliers claiming to be completely out
of stock of the 2Mb unit until September
and beyond. Psion are suffering from
supply problems on the RAM memory
chips used in both models: these being
on a lead time of several months. The
1Mb model is the easiest to obtain, as it
requires only one chip (as opposed to the
2Mb machine which uses two), but many
prospective purchasers could be in for a
frustratingly long wait.

SoundMASTER here at last

Psion’s long-promised sound manipula-
tion package has finally been released.
See page 10 for a full review.

PsiWin released

The much talked about PsiWin file
transfer and backup program to run
under Microsoft Windows™ has recently
been released. The software, reviewed in
the last issue of Palmtop, is supplied as an
integral part of the standard 3Link RS232

(serial) link package, replacing the old
MCLINK and RCOM utilities. The
complete package is priced at £79.95,
and the software alone is available as an
upgrade at £39.95.

New OPL programming tools

ODE, the new OPL Development
Environment to run under Microsoft
Windows™, has just been released.

Designed to ease the job of software
development for the Psion range, ODE
contains numerous features to make life
easier:

Programs are compiled into projects
containing all procedures for a given
program, together with its associated
data files, macros, etc. Once the project
is entered or imported into ODE it is
scanned for errors, translated for the
required machine, and then run directly
from your Psion using the 3Link to
transfer the necessary files.

Apart from general programmers’ tools,
ODE helps the novice by incorporating
OPL Reference, a superb Windows™
help file. By highlighting any OPL
keyword in your code and pressing F1, a

JAX*MERU »
TF Ax AND (LOC(MOTS, CiIRS (Ax) )<90)
GOTO EXDKEXU

60)

EXDIE

ELSEIF Ax AND $200
|Ax*4%~8 200

IF LOC( BOTS. CKRS(AX))
coro EXDMEND

full syntax explanation and sample code
appears on screen.

ODE is priced at £29.95 and requires
Windows™ 3.1 or higher and a 3Link.

Purple Tool Kit

Purple Software will shortly release an
attractive utilities package based upon
their popular File Manager & Convert
software. The new suite, known as ‘Tool
Kit 1’ will provide new enhanced
versions of both the comprehensive File
Manager and useful units conversion
software, together with two completely
new utilities: PicView and ScrnPrint.
PicView will allow any standard .BMP
.PCX and .GIF files to be viewed directly
on the Series 3/3a, and ScrnPrint will
allow any Series 3/3a screen image to be
dumped to a printer. Drivers for most
common printer types are included.

The complete package will cost £49.95
on SSD, or less if supplied on PC floppy
disk. A full review of Tool Kit 1 will
appear in Issue 4 of Palmtop.

Nokia SMS Link

The Nokia SMS Link for the Series 3 and
Workabout machines is now planned for
release in ‘late Summer’ this year. More
details will appear in issue 4 of Palmtop,
but the link will basically allow editing,
sending and receiving of SMS (Short
Messaging Services) messages over GSM
and PCN mobile telephone networks.

Autoroute for the 3a??

The ubiquitous route-finding software for
the PC and Apple Macintosh, Autoroute,
has been rumoured to be ‘under
construction’ for the Series 3a for many
months now. These rumours are now
beginning to cement themselves into an
actual release date of around September
this year. The package will probably
cover the UK only, and is likely be
supplied on a 1Mb_non-formattable
ROM SSD—like the existing Spelling
Checker & Thesaurus. Price is likely to be
under £100, but no firm details are avail-
able at present.

Covertec cases

A French company, Covertec, is intro-
ducing a new range of rugged cases and
belt/shoulder holsters for the Series 3/3a
and Workabout machines. Full pricing
and worldwide distribution details are
not available at the moment, but it is
hoped that the Covertec cases will be
included in a comprehensive review of
Series 3 carrying cases planned for the
next issue of Palmtop.

Readers’ Letters

This is an opportunity to voice your opinion on all those
contentious Psion-related subjects and help to fund your

Palmtop subscription at the same time.

EVERY published letter gets the author one free issue
added to their subscription plus the dubious fame associ-

ated with being a Palmtop contributor.

As a special incentive to write, the best letter
submitted for issue 4 will receive a FREE copy

nes
=
os

of Psion’s new Soundmaster software reviewed

elsewhere in this issue!

Dear Palmtop

| was interested to read Jill Dick’s letter in
Issue 2 referring to the key legends
coming off her machine. | believe that
the keyboards are sourced from a
number of different suppliers and |
suspect that this is where the variation in
quality arises. On my S3a (now nearing
two years old), there is no sign of deteri-
oration of the lettering on the keys. This
is despite the fact that | have fairly acidic
fingers. | surmise therefore that the orig-
inal 3a machines were built with a
‘higher specification’ keyboard.

What does trouble me with my machine
(and I’ve seen the same comment from
others) is the slight pitting of the screen
which has gradually appeared. When it is
viewed obliquely, a series of small straight
lines can clearly be seen. These are
caused by contact with the edges of the

keys and are most noticeable at the
bottom of the screen where the
number/symbol keys press, though slight
marking is also visible from the next two
key rows as well.

If anyone is troubled by this marking,
then it can be hidden fairly easily by
using a trick taught to me many years ago
by a fellow photographer, for dealing
with slightly scratched negatives. Rub a
finger down the angle between the nose
and the cheek, to get a light coating of
‘nose-grease’ on the finger tip; then wipe
the finger over the pitted area. The
grease will fill in the pits and hide them
from view. (That really is a serious sugges-
tion, by the way.)

Finally, picking up Jill’s last point about
the ‘Psion symbols’, it can be seen that
they are made from ‘dismembered’
letters, by looking at the symbol above

the ‘N’. Close inspection shows that the
symbol is composed of two rectangles
(the upright legs) and a parallelogram,
which is the diagonal bar of the N.

Joe Griffin
Horsham, West Sussex

As part of an exclusive franchising deal,
Palmtop will shortly be releasing
special ‘3a nose-grease’ in attractive
gift packs. Never let it be said that we
don’t offer the best for our valued
customers (?) - Ed

Dear Palmtop

| feel that | just have to comment on the
review of Sokaban in issue 1. | have now
successfully reached level 87 out of 86
(2!), and: have spent many hours on the
game. The level of complexity of each
successive level rises consistently to
about level 13, at which point there is a
really sticky patch. The levels up to
around number 20 thus give hours of
brain-bending entertainment as one tries
to fathom the mind that formulated the
layout.

Beyond 20 or so the levels appear largely
to ease in complexity, occasionally
catching you out with a new and clever
trap. Level 87 actually poses an ‘impos-
sible’ puzzle, with access required to
complete the level blocked by solid
walls. This can be worked around (i.e.
cheated) by going into the actual data file
for the 87 levels, editing the wall position
and then proceeding to complete the
game. The wily author obviously

predicted such devious trickery, and
upon completing this manoeuvre
Sokaban duly presents you with a dialog
box saying ‘Now go off and do something
more useful instead’—or words to that
effect.

Even having completed all levels of the
game | am still hooked. | have now
returned to level one and will probably
keep going until | can complete every
level in a single attempt.

Well done with the magazine Steve—my
Palmtop is now as valuable to me as my
3a!

David Richards
Steventon, Oxfordshire

Dear Palmtop

‘Palmtop News’: to my way of thinking
this is the most important part of your
magazine, but who’s trying to hold in
with the Psion hierarchy with the state-
ment that ‘content of the magazine is
excellent’ when referring to Psion User?
Whoever sold Psion management the
idea of spending money on a project like
this, only to fill it with a load of waffle
deserves either a pay rise as a salesman
or the sack if he’s a Psion employee.

(excerpt from letter only)

John King
Cooktown, AUSTRALIA

Well John, I’d be the first to admit that
Psion User is not the most rivetting

read, but surely you're being a bit
harsh? One cannot deny the excellent
quality of production (something for
Palmtop to aspire to), and the material
itself is competently written. The whole
thing is largely another publicity tool
for Psion, but | certainly enjoyed
reading several of the articles, and it’s
entertaining to see the vast number of
uses to which these amazing little
computers are put.

Apart from the fact that Psion User is
produced in the same font as Palmtop
(you saw it here first), another obvious
plus point is that it is completely free!
Psion User may be only a rather small
gift horse, but considering the relative
scarcity of published information on
the Series 3/3a machines it is a gift
horse nonetheless.

Whereas it’s not in my personal
interest as editor of Palmtop to upset
those at Psion | would certainly have
had no hesitation in condemning Psion
User if | really didn’t like it—but that
wasn’t the case.

—What do other readers think of Psion
User? Do you consider it a ‘nice little
freebie’ or just another piece of junk
mail? Please write and let us know - Ed.

Dear Palmtop

| was surprised to hear that the games
Fairway and Lander were both written
entirely using OPL. | once attempted to
write a version of Asteroids for the Series

3, but only got as far as half a dozen big
asteroids and a steerable spaceship
before it all slowed down too much to go
on. Some tips on incorporating pictures
into a program from the authors (Steve
Litchfield and Andrew Baldwin) would
be very interesting. Another useful area
would be information on what is avail-
able for program development. In my last
job everyone in my department had
Series 3’s and | wrote the occasional
piece of software when required. | wrote
to Psion for information on development
software and manuals, but’! couldn’t
understand a word of it and never
managed to get any further.

Keith England
New Malden, Surrey

Palmtop can easily come to the rescue
on this one, Keith. Issue one contained
a ‘Programmers’ Workshop’ article on
the very subject of graphics program-
ming, and was written by the author of
Lander in person—Andrew Baldwin.
The same gentleman also discussed
the various programming tools avail-
able to the budding programmer in
issue 2 (which you will by now have
received), and the depths of the volu-
minous SDK (Software Development
Kit) are probed by Andrew in this issue.

If there is a particular aspect of
programming (or anything else) that
YOU would like to see covered in
Palmtop then please get in touch - Ed.

Dear Palmtop

Once again the content, variety and
quality of Palmtop has exceeded all the
opposition, and | am pleased to note that
subscriptions are rolling in at a good rate.
| will continue to spread the. word to all
my Psion-owning friends.

Since last writing to you | have acquired
a brand new 3Ffax—it’s marvellous.
Whilst my telephone bill may now
increase a little I’m sure that my postage
costs will reduce accordingly, and hope-
fully by even more!

The only negative point | would make
about my new ‘toy’ is that Psion’s idea of
a ‘nominal’ cost for providing a scanned
image of your signature (£19.95) differs
somewhat from my own, especially after
them having just obtained a good profit
from the purchase of the 3Fax itself.

In hindsight, by annoyance at the scan-
ning cost is mostly due to my own rush to
get the signature scanned. Had | consid-
ered things more cautiously then | would
have remembered that | actually own an
image conversion program for my Atari
ST, which is quite capable of exporting
Windows™ .BMP files. This, together
with a 200dpi hand scanner and half an
hour’s work was all | needed to get both
my own and my wife’s signatures safely
installed onto my Psion SSD. Oh well,
what is money for if not to spend?

Chris Phelps
Brockworth, Gloucestershire

Shareware 22

Many of our readers may be
unfamiliar with how to obtain the
enormous amount of shareware and
free software available for the Psion
Series 3 and 3a machines.

Apart from downloading the software
from electronic bulletin boards and
online services such a CompuServe
and CiX, perhaps the most exhaustive
catalogue of software is held by Steve
Litchfield’s ‘3-Lib’:

3-Lib offers either a collection of a
couple of hundred of the very best
shareware programs as a standard set
on floppy disk, or selected files from
the entire 3-Lib archives (currently
around 1000 programs) on floppy
disk or Flash SSD.

If you would like more information on
3-Lib then please contact Steve
Litchfield directly at the following
address (note that Steve has recently
moved):

3-Lib

22 Grays Crescent
Woodley

Berkshire RG5 3EN
ENGLAND

Tel: +44 (0)1734 265081

E-mail:
slitchfield@cix.compulink.co.uk

| orsend a SAE for more details.

A Closer Look...

...at some of the newest and most interesting
products available for your Series 3/3a

[ Sound MASTER )

The colourful = packaging _for
SoundMASTER proclaims that you can
now ‘Wake up to the sound of a bugle
call or have baaing sheep remind you of
your appointments. You can record your
own voice, throw in some special effects,
add some vibrato, mix in a drumbeat in
the background and use the resulting
sound in your Agenda. With
SoundMASTER, you can create, mix and
master your own sounds using a variety
of special effects.’ If that’s what you want

QUACK 5.68600 sec

offers functionality beyond that of some
professional sound editors.

| have used a variety of digital sound
editing packages in my capacity as a
commercial radio producer, and
SoundMASTER compares very well. An
accurate waveform of the recorded
sound is drawn, and can be scrolled and
magnified smoothly. Manipulation of the
audio is pretty easy, and all of the options
can be accessed either via the menus or
by using hotkeys.

There is no doubt that if you want to
manipulate sounds on your Psion then

The entire waveform (along bottom), with a zoomed section in the main window

from your Series 3a then you certainly
won't be disappointed. SoundMASTER is
an amazing program that does all it
promises. It is visually very attractive, and

this is the package to use—the only ques-
tion is ‘why would you want to?’ The
Series 3a has no line level inputs or
outputs and the sampling rate is only

8kHz, which rules out using it for any
professional application. The sheer size
of sound files prevents the 3a from being
able to handle dictated memos, so at best
it brings the user a novel way of
customising early morning alarm calls to
impress or annoy your friends. At worst,
3a sound is little more than a memory-
intensive, battery-hungry gimmick.

The ‘tools’ available from within
SoundMASTER are as follows:

Adjust speed - The speed of the playback
can be reduced to 10% of the original, or
speeded up by as much as 1000%. The
direction of the file can also be reversed.

Volume - Increase or decrease the
volume, plus apply fading in/out at the
start or end of the file.

Filter - ‘Apply: a filter to reduce back-
ground noise.

Special

My
2
i i

Adding the special effects...

Insert files - Two audio files can be joined
or mixed together.

Insert Waveform - The option to insert
‘pure’ sound in the form of sine, block or
saw waveforms, or white noise.

Vibrato - Best described as a ‘wobble’
added to the sound, with options to vary
the magnitude of the effect and the
number of vibrations per second.

Echo - This gives the opportunity to add
a single or multiple echo, vary the delay
time, and increase the length of an audio
file to incorporate a long fading echo.

Voxcoder - A very powerful effect which
can add a metallic tone, church ambi-
ence (which sounds more like the
recording was made inside a bathroom),
or transform a human voice to sound like
it’s underwater.

If you want to create weird and
wonderful alarm sounds for use in the
Agenda or Time applications then you
should find it very easy with
SoundMASTER. Also, by using the delete,
fade and filter commands, it’s possible to
remove the sound of the keyclick that
can be heard when the recording is
started, and to trim away unused space.

As | mentioned before, sound files will
rapidly eat into your machine’s valuable
RAM, and in order for SoundMASTER to
manipulate these data files you'll need a
lot of free space. As an example, |
recorded a five second voice sample
which took up 41K. | then made a minor
edit to the file, which created a workfile
of another 41K. Then adding an echo
created a temporary file, TEMP_WVE,
which took up another 41K. Admittedly,
this file deleted itself once the echo had
been added, but when you bear in mind
that the Psion literature says
SoundMASTER needs 60K of free
memory to run, and the program itself is
29K, you’re looking at 212K of your
precious memory eaten just to work ona
five second voice clip!

Provided the program is given sufficient
working memory it seems quite stable,
although some of the effects take several
seconds to calculate. This is not
surprising, bearing in mind how much
processing is being applied to the data.
One ‘bug’ | found in the course of evalu-
ating SoundMASTER . Attempting to add
a sine wave of one second into a file
caused my machine to lock every time |
tried it. Any attempt to restart the
program generated a ‘File or device in
use’ error. The only escape route was to
kill the application and start again. The
original soundfile is unaffected, but |
have yet to find a way of hearing
SoundMASTER’s sine wave.

T «Multiple echo+ |
‘Echo volume %

cl oe 5a
‘Delay of echo(inseconds) 6.25
‘Extra time (in seconds) 8
‘Ran id Whole file

Adding an echo

One noticeable omission is that there
doesn’t appear to be any way of playing
only a part of (rather than the whole) file.
Once a selection has been highlighted for
deletion or adjustment it would be useful
to audition just that section. | found it
odd that this option was not included.

SoundMaster comes complete with 39
pre-recorded sounds, ranging from a
rather nauseating crying baby to a spine
chilling cat, as well as a couple of Star
Trek sound effects and ten samples of
well-known classical pieces.

The package also includes two DOS

programs, WAV2WVE and WVE2WAV,
which will allow you to convert Psion
WVE files to Windows™ WAV files and
vice versa.

¢ Disk Internal, 115976K free +
NWUEN\=

S8p
RR eG

Sound effects on tap

The documentation supplied with the
software is possibly a little basic. In
booklet form, the ten page manual is the
same size as a compact disc inlay, with
only three pages describing the operation
of the actual program. The remaining
seven pages cover installation instruc-
tions and memory requirements.

In summary, SoundMASTER is an excel-
lent piece of polished software, but I’m
sorry to say is now destined for deletion
from my machine. My Series 3a needs
the storage space for something more
important - data.

SoundMASTER is available on 3.5 inch PC
floppy disk only. If you don’t have access
to the necessary 3link cable and
computer (or a RangerDisk) then you'll
just have to give this one a miss.

Pete Sipple

infoBox

SoundMASTER is available from all
Psion dealers at £24.95. It will not run
on the Series 3 ‘Classic’ machines.

The Lost Treasures

of Infocom

The trouble with Series 3 and 3a games is
that many of them lack the ability to hold
the player’s interest for more than what
can often be a short number of hours.
When considering that most commercial
game packages sell for around double
the price of a very good board game
(remember those?) this can often repre-
sent rather poor value for money (even
though they DO sometimes contain
more than one game.)

ventional, at least to the Series 3/3a user,
as it is actually an ordinary PC game with
an add-on (the bit by /nterdata) to make
it run on a Series 3 or 3a. The ‘game’
comprises 22 text-based adventure
games supplied on five 720K PC floppy
disks. For those unfamiliar with - text
adventures, the player is placed in an
imaginary world or situation, and is
required to negotiate a number of
complex scenarios in order to ‘complete’
the adventure. Completion of the games
usually involves either escaping from
some deadly peril, solving a mystery or
successfully obtaining treasure or some

Infocom interactive fiction - a science fiction story
Copyright (c) 1984 by Infocom, Inc. All rights reserved.
Release 31 / Serial number 871119 / Interpreter 2 Version A

You wake up. The room is spinning very gently round your head. Or at least it
would be if you could see it which you can’t.

It is pitch black.
>

The opening screen of the well-known ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy’

Series 3/3a games likely to hold the
player’s interest for more than a few
dozen hours can probably be counted on
the fingers of one hand. Psion’s own
Chess game comes immediately to mind
here, together with a few other imple-
mentations of classics such as Patience
(Solitaire) and Reversi (Othello).

A less obvious member of this category is
the ‘Lost Treasures of Infocom’ package
distributed by Interdata Developments.
Presentation of this package is uncon-

other reward. Game play proceeds by
typing in commands when presented
with a textual description of each situa-
tion as the story unfolds (see screenshot
below.)

The method of play takes only a matter
of minutes to master, and the so-called
‘input parser’ will accept a sizeable
vocabulary of phrases. Examples of
recognisable commands might be: ‘Walk
to the North’, ‘West’, ‘NE’, ‘Down’, ‘Take
the birdcage’, ‘Open the. panel’,

‘Examine the shiny coin’, ‘Put the egg
and the pencil in the cabinet’, and so on.
The font size and style can be adjusted to
suit the reader, and games can be saved
and restored at any point.

The contents really include two distinct
sections: the first is a large and sturdy box
containing the PC version of the games,
comprising not only the program data
disks but also two large books (totalling
over 600 pages) containing masses of in-
depth background information to help in
solving the various adventures, and
hundreds of hints for those occasions
where you get really stuck. A couple of
dozen assorted fold-out maps, plans and
other notes complete the contents.

The second part of the package
comprises a 20 page booklet containing
everything you need to know in order to
run the games on your Psion. Separate
versions are included for both the orig-
inal Series 3 and the 3a, although the
software will not run in the limited
memory of the 128K Series 3.

Installation involves transferring a single
APP program file from a floppy disk
supplied with the booklet to your Psion,
plus a separate data file for each of the
22 games.

The list of data files (games) installed on
your machine then appear under an
icon, just as document files within the
word processor, database, etc. Bear in
mind that although the data files are large
in size (varying between 80K and 260K
each) it is unnecessary to have more than
one of the games loaded at any time. Be

forewarned that the games are both elab-
orate and involved, and: are not some-
thing you are likely to solve within a few
hours of game play. Although the solution
of each ‘adventure’ will of course vary
from player to player, | would estimate
that each is likely to take something in
the order of 50-100 hours to complete
from start to finish.

The attraction of this package will
depend very much upon the individual
tastes of the prospective gamer. Lovers of
quick-fire shoot-em-ups may not find the
text-only interface to be to their liking.
For anyone with a penchant for fantasy
and adventure however, the ‘The Lost
Treasures’ could keep you engrossed for
years! Although each game is played in
essentially the same way and shares an
identical user interface the themes of the
games themselves vary enormously.

The ‘Lost Treasures’ also have a quality
almost unknown in modern computer
games, in that they can easily be enjoyed
by more than one person at the same
time. It is possible for a whole family to
sit down with one nominated person
reading each section from their Series 3,
allowing the other members of the
collective group to discuss and debate
their next move. In this way, the game
becomes of value as an entertaining
diversion when either alone, when trav-
elling on a long journey with others, or
even as a party game.

If all of this appeals, and you have both
the means to load the software from the
PC floppy disks onto your Psion machine

(or SSD), and you have the free storage
space in which to hold the rather large
data files, then this combined package
probably offers the most satisfying recre-
ational software you could possibly buy
for your palmtop.

Considering that the package really
contains 22 complete and separate
games then the value for money is quite
excellent. How many other purchases
would give so many hours of enjoyment
for only a few pounds per game?

As a final bonus (for some at least), the
games will of course run equally well on
a standard PC compatible computer—
even an old or slow one, as it doesn’t
require Windows™ in order to run. You
can even transfer the log file for your
current game in order to re-start on the
PC where you left off on the Psion (or
vice versa).

The following games are included
in the ‘Lost Treasures’ package:

Adventure: __ Infidel

Horror: The Lurking Horror
Enchanter

Zork |

Zork II

Zork III

Beyond Zork

Zork Zero

Sorcerer
Spellbreaker

Fantasy:

Deadline
Suspect
Witness
Ballyhoo
Moonmist

Mystery:

Sci-Fi: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to
The Galaxy
Planetfall
Suspended
Stationfall
Starcross

The Psion program disk also contains two
bonus classic games: Adventure and
Curses.

The packaging describes _ this
compendium of games as ‘A fortune in
Interactive Mystery, Fantasy and Science
Fiction Adventures!’ For many people
this description is really quite true.

Steve Clack

IinfoBox

‘The Lost Treasures of Infocom’ is
available directly from the following
address:

Interdata Developments
6 Okeover Road
Salford M7 4)X

Tel: +44 (0)161 7922871
Fax: +44 (0)161 7922114

Price is £45.45 including postage and
packing within the UK.

Serious Programming on
the Psion Series 3a

A nice book for the complete beginner,
describing how to program in OPL on the
Psion series 3a. Please note the ‘a’ here,
as there is also a separate Kuma book
devoted to programming on the Series 3
‘Classic’.

The book contains 12 chapters ranging
from the fundamentals of ‘computers
and their languages’ to ‘manipulating the
memory’. There are also two appen-
dices containing the solutions to all of
the ‘tests’ contained within the book,
plus several program listings. A disk
containing all of the programs in the
book is also available, but this is not
included and must be ordered separately.

The book takes the user step by step, and
assumes the reader to have acquired
some knowledge at each stage before
proceeding to the next chapter. At the
beginning of each chapter you are
presented with the ‘training objectives’

and at the end of each chapter there is a .

test to confirm that you have mastered
the current subject. The whole concept is
actually quite straightforward, though
rather school-like.

The content of the book is quite
complete within its scope, but it is most
certainly aimed at a person with little
knowledge of programming, so the more
advanced programmer will find little of
interest within its pages.

In the book’s favour, | really liked the way
the author explains each term in clear
detail, and despite containing quite a lot
of theoretical’ material it also has
numerous well described examples. On
the downside, in real terms the book
contains little that is not covered in the
standard 3a Programming Manual, it is
just presented a little differently (and
perhaps in a more readable fashion).
Also, | didn’t like the typographic
output: the text is full of errors and is
poorly printed, which sadly appears to be
a common feature of Kuma’s Psion
related books.

As | said, if you read the Programming
Manual thoroughly then you will learn
practically as much as if you buy this
book. On the other hand, if you're inter-
ested in the more theoretical terms and
in the principles of structured program-
ming then you will find some useful
passages in this book.

All in all, | don’t regret buying “Serious
Programming...”, | just wish they had
changed the title to remove the word
‘Serious’. Given the level of the informa-
tion contained within it | would say that
this title gives the reader a slightly
misleading view of its targeted appeal.

| would recommend this book particu-
larly to someone who has NEVER
programmed before in any language, but
if you are already familiar with BASIC or
some other language then you may be
well advised just to read the Psion
Programming Manual instead.

Chapters

Here are the chapter titles to give you a
better idea of the content:

Chapter1 Computers and _ their
languages

Chapter 2 — Program design

Chapter 3 Variables

Chapter 4 —_Using the series 3a display

Chapter 5 Decisions ... decisions

Chapter6 —_ Looping the loop

Chapter 7 — Arrays

Chapter 8 Procedures

Chapter9 Functions

Chapter 10 _ File handling

Chapter 11 eae ; Pk e oh ee

Chapter 12 Manipulating the memory

Appendix A Answers to post tests

Appendix B Listings

Index

Daniel Pfund

Onex, SWITZERLAND

Databases?

In the ‘Beyond DATA’ article in the
last issue of Palmtop | failed to
mention which versions of the soft-
ware were being reviewed. These
were: JBData 1.2, DataView 1.01F
and DataDeLuxe 2.50.

JBData has since been upgraded to
version 1.3, which now supports
direct international dialling.

The review also stated that JBData
does not print in list view—this state-
ment was incorrect. My apologies to
John Boyce for my error. Sorry John!

Classifieds?

No-one appears to have anything for
sale this month, but please don’t

forget that Palmtop will happily
publish classified advertisements free
of charge, subject to available space.

IinfoBox

“Serious Programming on the Psion
Series 3a” is written by Bill Aitken, and is
available from selected dealers and
bookshops, or directly from Kuma on
+44 (0)1734 844335, priced £16.95.

(381 pages. ISBN: 0-7457-0282-1)

( MemoFind

Attaching memos to your 3a Agenda
entries is a useful way to add long notes
to the rather short description allowed in
the Agenda entry itself. Entering informa-
| tion in this way is simple and straightfor-
ward, but do you ever wish there was an
| easy way to find text within those
memos? If you know that you’ve
attached a memo to an entry, but can’t

remember which one, then Agenda has
no way of locating this for you—you can’t
| even get a listing of all the memo entries
from which to start looking.

® It will allow you to enter any text
string, and will locate all memo
entries that contain the selected text.

MemoFind will also handle any entries
you may have encrypted with passwords,
prompting you to enter them as neces-
sary in order to access the text.
MemoFind requires you to close down
each Agenda file before you can search
it, but this is a small price to pay for the
use of such a valuable program.

The single .APP file takes less than 12K of
storage space, and it even has on-line
help! Indispensable.

Find memos

! “Agenda Name
\ |: Disk

| Text to find
‘Password

| *Set password

4 ‘Confirm password

MemofFind solves all these problems at a
stroke. This simple utility has three main
features:

® Itwill search through any Agenda file,
giving a list of every entry it finds (see
screenshot).

@ By pressing ‘Enter’ with the cursor on
any item in the list, MemoFind will
take you directly into the corre-
sponding memo so you can read it.

Agenda.agn
Internal

Getting ready to search for memos

3¢smemos
1778671995 APPT Meeting with John
14/6671995 APPT Feed the cat!
29/65/1995 deli Dinner with B&G
29/85/1995 APPT Car service

TODO Decorate kitchen

Listing selected memo entries

IinfoBox

MemoFind is available as freeware
from the usual sources as
MEMFIN.ZIPR.

[ Clock

t4Sue

Here’s another simple but useful utility.
Turn your 3a into an attractive (but
expensive) desk clock with ‘Clock 1.1’,
by Dan Comiskey. When run, it simply

and plugged into a mains adaptor with
the auto switch off disabled. ‘Clock’ can
then be assigned to the ‘Control-Time’
softkey, kept running continuously, and
used to display a running clock when the
3a is not being used for other things.
Probably entirely useless for 90% of

Preference

‘Default Alarm Chimes

‘Default Time

68:88 am
‘Snooze Time 7?

‘Alarm Volume RR
‘Daily Alarm Loud

‘Off onSnooze |Medium
| Prefs Disk Soft

Configurable and snoozeable alarms

displays a giant on-screen digital clock
showing hours, minutes and seconds.

Clock has no exciting hidden features,
and although you can set alarms from
within it, this can be done equally well
from the Psion’s built-in TIME software.

The primary use for this software is for
someone who keeps their 3a on a desk

users, but a delightful desk accessory for
the other 10%. In any case it’s free, so
you can easily try it out to find out where
you fit into this equation.

InfoBox

Clock is available as freeware from

the usual sources as CLOCK.ZIP

Macros on the Series 3a

How would you like to make your Series 3a
more efficient, more powerful, and yet easier
to use? Sounds too good to be true? Not if you
use macros. Rick Andrews investigates...

Macro recording provides a way of
copying key presses and replaying them
automatically when a particular key
sequence or ‘hotkey’ is used. All macro
programs work the same way by ‘fooling’
the computer into thinking a series of key
strokes have been made when a hotkey
combination is pressed.

How are they helpful? Well, macros
enable you to add features to the built-in
applications. For example, if you often
type your own name into documents
then you can set up a macro that simply
‘types out’ your name whenever you hit
the appropriate hotkey combination
(perhaps Shift-Control-n). Or if you feel
Psion should have put a ‘date stamp’
feature in the word processor application
that writes the current date and time, you
can add this yourself by installing a
macro, so that pressing the hotkey will
‘type’ the date stamp. And not only will
this macro run in Word, but now Data,
Sheet and all the other applications will
now have a useful Date stamp feature
too.

Macros also enable repetitive tasks to be
automated, and you can gain control of

non-programmable __ settings. For
example, you can use a macro to turn the
system sound off before running a noisy
game, and then have the sound switch
back on again afterwards. The scope and
usefulness of macros is limited only by
your own imagination.

If, after a hard reset, you find the relief of
seeing your data intact is scuttled by real-
ising that you have to go through the
tedious process of reinstalling your
groups and icons, you will find it useful to
run an ‘install’ macro that does this auto-
matically. An example of an ‘intelligent’
macro is the ability to do an automatic
‘find’ and ‘bring’ of people’s details in
Word. These things and much more are
possible if you take a little time to get to
grips with one of the two excellent macro
programs available for the 3a.

What macro software is
available?

Macro packages are available for most
computers (Windows™ has one called
Recorder, the Apple Macintosh has
AppleScript and there was also the
popular FnKey for the Psion Organiser I!),

but it wasn’t until last year that the Series
3a was so endowed when David Wood
produced the technological know-how
to trick the OS (Operating System) into
thinking the keys had been pressed. This
allowed programmers to write applica-
tions that could control others, though
technically only those written to use the
XWIM software development library.

An unfortunate limitation is that macro
software that uses this method won't
work in OPL programs or applications
that use HWIF (another development
library). For a while this meant only the
built-in applications could support
macros, but there are now some third-
party programs using XWIM (for example
the shareware viewer/converter FirePic).
If you’re not sure what type of applica-
tion you have, or this is all gobbledegook

and they both use David Wood's work as
their foundation. In fact, David wrote the
first application, KMAC, and released it
with the source code last year. The
second application, MacSys comes from
Tom Dolbilin, an OPL developer in the
USA.

Focus on KMAC

Looking first at KMAC (the name stands
for Keyboard Macro), you may be
wondering why the screen shot below
doesn’t show a picture of the application
screen. Well, it’s because KMAC is prob-
ably unique among Psion applications in
that it doesn’t display its own screen
when it runs, weird huh? But it does have
a very good reason for this type of design,
as it makes the package as unobtrusive as
possible. It just lurks around, allowing

Keyboard macro support enabled

Kmac Kmac
Status(B] Status[B]

Continue

Memory used 331K

The closest you can get to a screen shot of KMAC

to you, there is a quick and easy way to
find out if macros are supported, by using
KMAC—detailed overleaf.

There are really only two macro applica-
tions available for the S3a (sadly there are
none that work on the Series 3 classic)

Kmac v8.91a - released 25th April 1994
Copyright © Psion PLC 1994

Help

oe St~—“‘;*™C*ds‘WF ree 181K

you to work in other applications, waiting
to hear its wake-up call. Of course, as it
has no screen, there is no point in
assigning an application button to the
KMAC icon—you can simply keep it
running constantly in the background,
waiting for the necessary keystrokes to

instantly execute the required macros at
any time you choose.

Every time KMAC is started, you can
choose to view a dialog box giving a
summary of the hotkeys it uses; they are
all based around the Ctrl-Shift modifiers
which aren’t in normal everyday use, so
KMAC shouldn’t pop up unexpectedly. In
case you forget the hotkey summary, it
can be brought up at any time with Ctrl-
Shift-Help as an aide memoire. To record
a macro, hit Ctrl-Shift-Space and enter
the name of the macro. From now on, as
well as producing their usual outcome,
all keystrokes are captured until Ctr/-
Shift-Space is hit again to end the macro.
A message appears confirming the macro
name and showing the number of key
presses stored. To replay the macro at
any time, just use Ctrl-Shift-Enter. This
may all sound a little complicated, but it’s
very straightforward once you have been
through the process a few times, so don’t
be deterred!

As mentioned above, some applications
can’t handle macros (OPL programs for
example), and for a quick way of
checking if the application you're in is

‘macro ready’, hit Control-Shift-Help for’

the pop-up KMAC help dialog—if the
software can’t support macros then a
warning alert appears instead of the usual
dialog box. Simple.

After a macro has been recorded, you
can change the hotkey using Ctrl-Shift-
Menu. This allows up to 26 macros
assigned to the hotkeys Ctrl-Shift-A
through to Ctrl-Shift-Z. Unfortunately,

having to use the Ctrl-Shift base means
that keys like ‘Help’ and ‘Tab’ cannot
have macros assigned to them. When
you exit KMAC (by hitting ‘Delete’ on the
System screen) the macros and their
hotkeys are saved to a .KMA file which
appears under the KMAC icon on the
system screen. You can use different sets
of macros by choosing a specific .KMA
file when starting KMAC. And if you get
into a pickle with a macro playing back in
the wrong place, it can be interrupted
with a quick hit of Shift-Ctrl-Esc.

You could decide to stop there with
KMAC and just use the basic macro
features, but you'd be missing out a lot of
advanced capabilities, as KMAC comes
with a command language enabling
complete control over your macros. By
using the editor KMACED.ALS you can
add definitions to basic macros in order
to enhance them. For example, the
command ‘Qtitle,question’ will pop up a
query dialog box, with KMAC then
running a second macro depending on
the result. There are also commands to
help develop macros such as ‘nudge
debugging’, where macros are replayed
one step at a time. Be warned here
though, as some macro code can get a bit
daunting—the author gives us an
example of ‘S@m“*T*0@4~*U’ as one
abbreviated macro!

The documentation provided with KMAC
is very detailed, with over 50Kb of text
(too big to fit into Word!) describing the
main KMAC application, and although
some of it is a bit technical it really does
explain the full capabilities of KMAC in

detail. Also the document explains how
to write OPL programs that can use the
KMAC facilities themselves. Very useful
for the more advanced user.

The ‘have-to-have’ files are KMAC.APP
and LPC.DYL, the Local Process Control
library which allows one application to
control another. Also provided is a .DBF
database file of the macro ‘Command
Language’ definitions as a handy refer-
ence. A set of example macros are also
given, one of which automatically starts
the Agenda in Week view.

Although David Wood works -at Psion
and KMAC is under Psion Copyright, it is
not an official Psion product, so isn’t
covered by Technical Support, etc.
However, David does say that he will try
to answer any KMAC questions posted in
the Psion conference on Cix.

Psion application. When run, it displays a
screenful of ‘slots’ for macro names and
their hotkeys arranged as four tabbed
folders holding 16 macros apiece.
Switching between them is accomplished
by using ‘Tab’ or the arrow keys, or by
hitting a letter key which moves to the
first macro beginning with that letter.

Recording is not as ad-hoc as KMAC, as
you have to be in the MacSys application
in order to begin recording. But hitting
Psion-R shows the on-screen instructions
to switch to the application you want to
record in. You also get a friendly ‘waiting
to record’ message flashing in the corner
to remind you that MacSys is awaiting
input. Pressing Psion-Menu _ starts
recording keystrokes with a ‘Recording
On’ message as confirmation, with Psion-
Menu again stopping the recording. You
are then jumped back to MacSys where

The Macro System application

Focus on MacSys

Macro System 2.0 (‘MacSys’), written by
Tom Dolbilin in the USA, provides much
of the same functionality as KMAC, but is
packaged much more like a ‘normal’

you have to edit and translate the macro
before inserting it into its ‘slot’. Here you
choose a hotkey which can be anything
from ‘Help’ to Control-Shift-Psion-Z. The
editable source code is stored in a .MCR
file under a /MACRO/ subdirectory, with

the translated output stored in a .MCO
file.

Perhaps the biggest contrast between this
and KMAC is that MacSys uses OPL (the
built-in Psion programming language) as
the basis for its macro language. What
difference does this make? Well, OPL is a
simple language to learn, and having the
ability to control macros in OPL makes a
powerful combination of the two
resources.

Developing a MacSys macro is very easy:
start by recording the basic keystrokes,
then edit the .MCR file, adding MacSys
functions or your own routines as
needed. (MacSys comes with an ‘alias’ of
the OPL editor application in which to
edit macros). For example, look at this
section of a macro to merge two spread-
sheet reports into one:

As you can see, actions like moving the
spreadsheet cursor can be achieved using
simple routines like ‘JumpTo:’ or
‘UseFile:’ to control the macro. If you
want to get the most from MacSys and
didn’t receive an OPL manual (Psion
don’t ship them with the new 1Mb or
2Mb machines) | strongly suggest that
you send off the coupon and get one.

UseFile: (“Sushi2.spr” )
ToFront:

SendKey: (Esc%,0,1)
JumpTo: (“A1” )

As there is practically no size limit to
MacSys macros, debugging could have
been a problem, except that the author
has supplied a ‘Log:’ keyword which
records text messages from the macro
into a separate log file. Any errors picked
up by MacSys are written to this log file,
and there is an option in the MacSys
application to view this file, as well as the
means to switch this diagnostic logging
on and off. When developing macros it is
sometimes useful to know the ASCII code
of a particular key press: MacSys has a
useful command which displays the
keycode value of any key sequence you
enter.

The on-line help comprises several
screens ranging from the real basics to
the installation and running of your
macros. There are about five pages of
documentation covering the MacSys
application plus a data file of the
command language and nine example
macros. A separate macro editor
(EDIMCR.ALS) is also provided.

In summary

The table on the following page gives
some comparative information on the

SendKey: (psion%+end%,shift%,1) rem Psion-Shift-End

UseFile: (“Zloty2.spr” )

: Application _KMAC v0.91a MacSys v2.0
ZIP file name kmac091.zip : macsys.zip
Size ‘of ZIP (bytes) 40,591 40,749
Date released 26 April 94 21 August 94
System memory used 20K 27K
Application file size 15K 36K
Maximum simultaneous macros 26 64
Command language keywords . 42 56
Maximum single macro size 127 Unlimited

two packages. Both KMAC and MACSYS
are available from 3-Lib, on CiX and
CompuServe, or the Internet FTP archive
at src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/psion, as
usual.

Both programs are extremely well
written, with no obvious bugs. It’s just a
pity they won't work within ordinary OPL
programs. If you just want the ability to
use a few macros now and again without
having to use OPL, then KMAC is prob-
ably more useful for you, and it’s smaller
and quicker to use. On the other hand, if
you want the ability to maintain and
organise a complete suite of OPL-based
macros (effectively a scripting-like macro
language) then MacSys is the better
system. MacSys has more third-party
macros written for it, like PASON, which
controls the use of the Psion system pass-
word. If you’re not sure, why not try both
and then choose the one you feel most
comfortable with?

Finally, the cost? Amazingly, both these
little beauties are freeware—which is
fantastic, as it means there is no reason
not to give macros a try!

As Rick says, both packages come with
good documentation, so this should be
enough to get most people started.

To help out further, there will be more
coverage of this useful technique in
future issues of Palmtop. Readers are
invited to send in their favourite and
most useful macros (either KMAC or
MacSys) for publication in the maga-
zine. If there is enough interest, then
we can even incorporate a regular
Macro-Corner in each issue. Let me
know what you think...

- Ed.

Money, Money, Money!

Steven Shone expounds the virtues of having your

Psion palmtop look after your personal finances...

F$FSH$HSS$S$SSH$$H$$$H$$$$SS$SS$SS$S$H$$S$$SS$SH$

Organiser II, | was both a user and

a programmer. The _ relative
simplicity of that little box of tricks was
such that | could program it with relative
ease. | wrote a vertical application or two
even for the Series 3. The graphics were
clunky, and | could deal with them. The
3a, in programming terms, is just too
much for me. | can’t cope with the
windows and graphics, and though |
could still write the simple programs of
old, they would now look like graffiti on
the walls of an art gallery.

| In the days of the old Psion

So (with minor exceptions) | now leave
programming to the experts and spend
alarming amounts of my hard-earned
brass on the burgeoning range of
commercial and shareware products.

My 2Mb 3a metaphorically bulges with
software for all seasons. My working and
social lives revolve around ‘The Psion’,
and my 40+ hours of battery life per pair
of batteries rarely lasts more than 10
days. | love it dearly, and if it malfunc-
tioned would miss it almost as much as |
would a broken arm or leg.

=~
ooo

But of more than 60 applications on the
machine, which has made the most
difference to my life? Which is the one |
could not live without? The possibly
surprising answer is Psion Money. Until
two years ago | was poorly organised
financially: | didn’t reconcile my bank
statements, | reconciled myself to them.
My ‘net worth’ was a subjective psycho-
logical measure, rather than a financial
one. My bank statements might have
been prepared by Alfred Hitchcock,
bringing as they did suspense, shock and
horror.

Dedicated use of this bank account
management program has transformed
me. My 3a now stores details of every
payment and receipt for at least the last
six months. | issue monthly profit and loss
statements and balance sheets to myself.
| track my wife’s impressive expenditures
against her less impressive budgets. |
print out detailed quarterly accounts, and
can retrieve archived data in moments.

| cannot tell you how good it feels to
write to my bank politely pointing out its
errors—after years of receiving letters

from it, politely pointing out mine. Or
replying by return to questions from my
accountants about tax-deductible
expenses. Or invoicing my firm in minute
detail for all my travel and other
expenses.

The software paid for itself in its first
month. It must have paid for the 3a and
two 4Mb SSDs in its first six months! |
have identified many of the ways in
which my salary was leaking away, and
have plugged them; best of all, | am in
control. No bank or credit card statement
ever surprises me (unless it is wrong—as
a surprising proportion are). | have recov-
ered much more than the cost of the soft-
ware in corrected errors, which in my
happy-go-lucky days | would never have
detected.

Yet the time invested to achieve all this is
surprisingly small. An hour to set up the
accounts (two years ago). A few seconds
every time | spend something. A few
minutes every time | receive a statement.
An hour or so every year to set up
budgets for the following year. | could
certainly achieve the same results with
paper records, but | would never find the
time.

The point is that you can’t solve a
problem unless you can define it.
Constant measurement of my financial
status has put my problems in proportion
and made them soluble. | operate within
my means, and have steadily increased
my net worth ever since | first worked out
what it was! Yet | have not sacrificed a
single pleasure. On the contrary, | have

been able to afford pleasures | previously
thought were beyond my reach. All the
difference has been made by eliminating
waste, and building regular savings into
my monthly spending pattern.

Of course people can (and do) achieve
all this with PC-based software such as
Quicken—in fact, Quicken can do much
more than Money. In my view however,
no additional features on a PC program
can offset the Psion’s primary advan-
tage—that it is with me at all times. It is
there when | spend the money, so it is
always completely up to date. | enter my
data in spare moments on planes and in
waiting rooms, rather than having to
dedicate special time to the task. No
shoe-boxes full of tiny slips of paper ever
deter me from keeping on top of my
finances.

On the 3a, Money now has serious rivals.
From what | have read, Banker from
Pelican Software is much better at
exchanging files with Quicken, and may
have other features too. Its author is on
CompuServe, and regularly implements
new features requested by users. Money
is just the way it is, and the author is
safely inaccessible. | have to live with its
idiosyncrasies. For example:

=> It consumes too much RAM to be left
running all the time (at least if | want
to run 3Fax or my time recording soft-
ware or Fairway), and it loses some of
my layout preferences every time |
exit.

»> It shows my net worth in the bottom
right hand corner of the main screen,

and | don’t really care to have it on Programmers . Work shop

constant display around other
people.

=» | work in several currencies, and
would prefer to have line items in my
Polish Zloty or my US Dollar
accounts in local currency, while
leaving the balance sheet and profit
& loss accounts in Sterling.

| don’t normally subscribe to the ‘if it ain’t
broke don't fix it’ philosophy. If | did, |
would happily be lugging a bulging Filofax
everywhere. On this occasion, however
there is too much at stake for me to risk
a change! Until the Series 4 at least,
Money will be organising my financial
life. New users of such software,
however, should check out the opposi-
tion.

As a partner in a law firm, | receive a lot
of financial data about our business.
Using Money, | can now honestly say that
my personal accounts are maintained to
the same standard. All this with a staff of
one (unpaid), and a machine that fits in
my pocket.

Steven D. Shone
Warsaw, Poland

Here’s a chance to win
yourself a copy of
Psion’s NEW audio
manipulation and
sound effects software,
SoundMaster, reviewed
on page 10 of this
issue.

All you need to do is
send us a list of the ‘ten
most indispensable
pieces of shareware
and free software’ for
the Series 3/3a.

The list can include
absolutely any software
you like—simply make
sure that each item is
likely to appeal to a

wide range of users.

The best list will be
published in the next
issue of Palmtop, and if
successful this may
become a_ regular
feature in the maga-

zine.

by Andrew Baldwin

elcome to my third program-

ming workshop. I’ve received a
number of letters regarding my intro-
duction to Object Oriented
Programming in the last issue, mostly
asking where to find all that informa-
tion. Well that’s something Ill look at
later in this article, but first let’s
continue with what we were looking at
last time: events and their importance
when creating programs that remain
responsive to the user at all times.

Apply yourself

There are two types of program you can
create when you write in OPL. The first
and simplest is to create one or more
procedures using the Series 3/3a’s built-
in program editor and then to choose the
Translate menu option. This writes out a
file to the /OPO/ directory with a file
name ending in ‘OPO’. Such a program
can be executed either from the Run
option in the program editor or by
selecting its name from under the
RunOpl! icon on the system screen.
When writing such a program you don’t
need to handle any events other than
directly relevant ones such as keypresses,
and you don’t need to write it with any
consideration of being ‘nice’ to the rest of
the computer, since the program can be

‘killed’ by the operating system at any
time by highlighting its name on the
system screen and pressing delete.
Though relatively easy to create, such
programs cannot be installed with their
own icons on the system screen. In order
to do that you must create what is known
as an Application.

The only difference between an applica-
tion and a ‘normal’ program is a short
header in the source (OPL) file beginning
with APP and ending with ENDA. When
you translate such programs they are
instead saved in the /APP/ directory with
an ‘OPA’ extension. Such files can be
installed on the system screen just like
most commercial software and can
include an icon image in their main file.

With writing an application comes a new
level of responsibility. Suddenly there are
many things your program must respond
to in order to be called ‘system friendly’.
However, remembering my comments
on event-based design from the last issue
of Palmtop, all we really need to do now
is to handle new types of events that are
sent to our program: the most basic of
which is the exit message. This is ‘sent’ to
your program by the system screen and
simply ‘tells’ the program to shut down. It
is therefore possible for a program to
safely save your data before terminating,

rather than just terminating abruptly.
Furthermore, if your program needs to
manipulate a particular file or file type in
some way, then it is ppssible to receive
Open or Create messages telling you to
change files or to create a new file where
necessary.

The different application types are all
documented in the programming manual
along with example code implementing
simple applications. You should use these
as a basis for your applications along with
an awareness of the importance of event
loops.

System secrets

As | mentioned above, my discussion of
the use of ‘objects’ in the last issue of
Palmtop generated a lot of feedback. The
main question asked was ‘Where can
people find all the information, such as
those special object and method
numbers?’ Well, as with most things on
the Psion machines, the ‘bible’ in these
matters is the Psion Software
Development Kit. | mentioned this in
passing last time with regard to alterna-
tive methods of programming the Series
3/3a. In its Standard and Professional
versions this provides a complete PC-
based ‘C’ development kit, but in both
these and the cheaper Documentation
only version (although it still costs around
£90) you receive 4 thick (and | mean
thick!) volumes of technical information
covering all aspects of the Psion SIBO
architecture, which includes the Series
3/3a, the new Psion Workabout, and the
older MC and HC machines.

Each volume is split into a number of
reference manuals, with some of these
being specific to a particular type of
machine, whilst others cover generic
topics applicable to the whole range of
SIBO machines. So, exactly which of
these are relevant to lowly OPL program-
mers? Let me go through them in a little
more detail:

Volume 1

This consists of 6 manuals:

General Programming Manual

This is of most interest to C programmers,
although it does look at important design
principles such as error handling, many
of which are relevant to OPL.

The SIBO Debugger

The debugger is an extremely useful tool
if you program in C or machine code,
and you have access to a PC. It allows
you to step through code line by line,
examining all aspects of a program. This
manual explains its usage, but unfortu-
nately the debugger is of no use to OPL
programmers.

HC Programming Guide

This is a guide to programming the Psion
HC machine. Not useful for 3a program-
mers.

Series 3/3a Programming Guide

This is much more useful to OPL people.
It looks in-depth at the specifics of
writing programs for the 3/3a. This
includes subjects such as icons in appli-
cations, aliasing, important reserved

statics (fixed areas of memory in a
program that contain useful information),
communication between programs and
the system screen, multilingual applica-
tions, sound, and using the SPY program
to keep a watch on all programs being
run. All in all, a very useful manual.

Programming in HWIF

This covers the C HWIF library. Not rele-
vant for OPL programmers.

Additional System Information

A mixed bag. It covers topics such as the
main file formats (DBF, Agenda, Word
Processor), resource files (these contain
all the language elements of a program,
allowing for multilingual programs and
compression of the textual information.
This is potentially useful for OPL users,
but is somewhat difficult to implement).
This manual also contains information on
printer models and device drivers.

Volume 2

Also 6 manuals:

PLIB reference

PLIB is the fundamental C library, so on
the face of it this manual doesn’t appear
to be useful for OPL programmers.
However, lurking within it is a wealth of
information regarding many important
issues in EPOC, including memory allo-
cation, asynchronous |/O, and _Inter-
process messaging. Furthermore, since
many PLIB functions are just shells over
system calls built into the ROM much of
the information is useful. These system

calls get their own manual further on.

Window Server Reference

If you want to understand how graphics
really work on the Series 3 then this is the
manual. Many aspects of this are not
apparent when using OPL, but they are
all available via system calls. This manual
tells you how to use these calls (if you can
translate the C speak to OPL speak—not
always easy).

1/O Devices Reference

This explains how to use all the
input/output devices available to you
with the OPL IOOPEN, IOCLOSE,
commands, etc. It covers things such as
the Serial and Parallel ports, Sound and
Timer devices, plus others. Very useful.

ISAM Reference

ISAM is a ‘DYL' (discussed in the last
issue) that allows rapid access to large
database files. This manual explains its
usage, and you can even use it from OPL.

EPOC O/S System Services

This is the jewel in the crown for OPL
programmers. It documents the majority
of the built-in system calls in all EPOC
machines. Although not all are useful in
OPL, those that are include all the little
‘trick’ functions such as those for
launching processes or changing system
flags. This section is even more useful if
you are programming in something like
Small C, since it provides you with a large
set of efficient functions. If you want to
use these functions in OPL then you will
need to search the disks that come with

the SDK for the relevant ‘include’ files
that tell you the ‘magic’ numbers, but this
is not a difficult task. In the next issue |
intend to go into more depth on the use
of system calls from OPL.

Hardware Reference

Only relevant if you are building expan-
sion devices—not for the faint hearted or
inexperienced!

Volume 3

Volume 3 consists of only two manuals. It
is the main introduction to object
oriented programming—the route to the
best applications:

Object Oriented Programming Guide

If you intend using Objects in OPL then
this is worth reading in order to famil-
iarise yourself with the fundamentals.
However, much of the in-depth informa-
tion (especially regarding the HWIM
library) is mostly of use when program-
ming in C. By using special OPL code
written by someone at Psion then much
more of the HWIM code can in fact be
used from OPL, however it is pretty
complicated stuff.

OLIB Reference

This is slightly more useful as it contains
information on the built-in OLIB DYL.
This was in fact what | used to create last
issue’s VARRAY example. There are other
objects here that are usable from OPL,
but unfortunately many others require
what is known as subclassing in order to
be useful, something not really possible

in OPL.

Volume 4

| don’t own a copy of this one, so | can’t
discuss it in depth. Previous versions of
the SDK up to version 2 included only
the first 3 volumes, but the most recent
version (2.1) comes with this extra
volume, mostly covering more of the
Object oriented libraries.

Summary

So, is the SDK documentation useful to
OPL programmers? Well, on the whole
yes—or at least it contains a lot of useful
information. However, | don’t think itis a
worthwhile purchase unless you are
going to be producing serious applica-
tions (for money!) The good news is that
there are alternative ways of finding
much of the same information. Firstly, the
most useful manual from the SDK (the
EPOC O/S System Services) is available
free in electronic form on certain elec-
tronic bulletin boards such as Cix.
Secondly, much of the SDK information
has been collated by Clive Feather into a
set known as the Psionics files. These can
be downloaded from the Internet (or try
3-Lib) and contain useful information on
system calls and other subjects.

Acronyms ’R’ Us

Just in case you’re wondering whai all
these acronyms mean, let me shed some
light. Psion refer to the Series 3 and other
machines as being based on the SIBO
architecture: where SIBO is short for

either ‘Single Board Organiser’ or
‘Sixteen Bit Organiser’ (take your pick!)
The Psion operating system that runs on
the SIBO architecture is known as EPOC,
however, nobody seems to know what (if
anything) EPOC is short for—the most
popular suggestion from Psion
employees being ‘Electronic Piece of
Cheese’!

Short and sweet

No program listings for you to type in this
time. If you have suggestions for things
you would like to see in future articles
then send them to Palmtop or e-mail
them to me on either
andrew@zarquon.demon.co.uk, or
baldwina@cix.compulink.co.uk. Next
issue | hope to take an in-depth look at
‘ODE’, the new Windows™ PC-based
OPL Development Environment software
from Psion.

WANTED

RangerDisk 3 in good
working order

- contact Paul Lippi
11 Ali Ibn Abi Taleb Street
P.O Box 19686
Jerusalem 91196
ISRAEL
or fax c/o Meriden Hotel:
+972 2 285214
or tel: +972 2 283271 (not Saturdays)

704 3 FD

Is there anything you
would like to see within
the pages of Palmtop
that isn’t

included?

currently

Do you have a great
idea for a_ regular
feature or section you
would like to see in the

magazine?

Can you think of any
changes that could be
made to Palmtop to
improve or widen its

appeal?

If you have any good
ideas such as these
then please don’t keep
them to yourselves!
Any suggestion that is
subsequently turned
into a__ regularly
published feature will
earn you a free issue,
and a mention in the
first issue where the

idea is used.

So start thinking!

Living with the 3FAX

by Nigel Wright

The 3Fax looks very much like a half-size
Series 3, the ribbed grey external appear-
ance being a close match. One end has a
standard jack for connection to a phone
socket (depending upon the country in

‘Recipient a

Delivered 832 333 3878

Faxes queued: @

‘Recipient name
8278? 51193 GRANAN LAYEROCK HOTEL ACCOMODATION

91788 5445384 SALES, STAK TRAD NEW SYSTEN QUOTATION ‘

8852 | Delivered

8851 | Delivered GISGS 85756S PAUL SINPSON
8856 | Delivered

8849

two standard AA batteries, with the
option to connect a Series 3/3a mains
adaptor. As with the Series 3 there is a
small green LED to show when mains
power is applied.

MATRIX ETCHER

PES3&B training

The 3Fax software neatly showing the precise status of your fax transmissions

which you buy the unit) and the other
has a cable with the familiar proprietary
plug to fit the communications port on
the left hand side of your machine. Psion
also supply adaptors for different coun-
tries at extra cost. Power is supplied by

The 3Fax has two functions: it can send
faxes at 9600 bps (Group 3), and as a
modem it complies with V22bis (2400
bps) with MNP4/V42 error correction
and MNPS/V42bis data compression.
The memory limitations of the Series3a

|| Created on 1476371995 at 11:51
|| By (application) + Faxcover

|| Original filename Fmil{B]

|| Number ofpages 1

Preview Viewtext Edittext Confirm

Coversheet details

prevent the receipt of incoming faxes and
also restrict operation to the
512K/1Mb/2Mb Series 3a’s only.

The 3Fax in use...

The 3Fax software is contained on
internal ROM inside the 3Fax unit, and
once connected to the Series 3a can be
installed in the familiar time honoured
manner using the Psion-I hot key combi-
nation. Once the application has been
started the user has the option to install a
local copy of the various software
components on either SSD or internal
memory. This allows creation and

Set preferences

Setting your preferences...

management of faxes even when discon-
nected from the 3Fax hardware. Unless a
1 or 2Mb Series 3a is being used it isn’t
advisable to install a copy of the software
to the internal drive due to the large size
of the application and the high system
overheads required by it during opera-

tion. Merely starting the 3Fax application
requires about 70Kb of free memory, and
actually sending a fax increases this to
about 160Kb. If you are using other
memory hungry applications you will
soon experience the dreaded ‘No System
Memory’ message, requiring you to close
down some of your other applications.

Choosing to install a local copy of the
software onto an SSD presents the user
with various options: 3Fax comes with
the fax send/create application (133K), a
coversheet -editing application (44K), a
selection of coversheet templates (8K),
some .PIC picture files (48K) that can be
included in a fax document, an updated
COMMS (and script editor) application
and sample scripts for logging onto on-
line services such as Cix.

Creating a fax

This is normally done in one of two ways:

Method 1

@® Create a coversheet containing a
short fax message.

® Enter recipient information.

® Attach ;pre-prepared documents if
necessary.

® Either send the fax, or queue it for
later transmission.

Method 2

@® Prepare a document on the Series 3a.

® Set FAX as the printer type and print

the document to a fax file.
® Enter recipient information.
® Create a coversheet.

® Attach other documents if necessary.

Coversheets can be created in much the
same way as word processor .WRT
templates. The coversheet editor can be
accessed from within the 3Fax applica-
tion, or as an application in it’s own right.
The message editor is very similar to
WORD except that it allows the user to
embed picture files anywhere in a cover-
sheet. Picture files must either be in Psion
-PIC or Windows .BMP (bitmap) format.
Using a drawing package will also allow
the user to create his/her own pictures for
inclusion. It’s also possible to scan one’s
own signature and convert the resulting
bitmap into a .PIC file for inclusion in
faxes as | have done. Psion offer an image
capture service for those who don’t have
access to a PC or scanner, and for a
nominal charge will convert logos or
signatures into .PIC format for you.

As with WORD, faxes can be previewed
to verify that you are happy with the
layout before transmitting them. 3Fax
also supports secure fax identities to help
avoid unauthorised interception of trans-
missions. It is also possible to attach as
many documents as desired, such as
reports, spreadsheets, etc. With these
tools at their disposal the user can quickly
create sophisticated and_ professional

looking faxes to rival the quality of those
produced using desktop applications.

Once a fax has been sent the user has the
option to tidy it (delete it). A tidied fax is
crossed through in much the same way
as a completed Agenda item. A useful
function here is the ability to compress
the fax log file in order to reclaim space.

Battery Life

Battery life with a set of Duracells is
about 10-14 hours, and nicads manage
around 8 hours at most. As with the use
of the serial link, faxing is battery inten-
sive. Psion offer their own rechargeable
pack for the 3Fax but, | have no personal
experience with it. 3Fax comes with its
own battery monitoring function similar
to that on the 3a, but this only measures
usage pertaining to faxing. For that
reason it’s not terribly accurate if you use
the unit in modem mode. Flat batteries
manifest themselves in failed transmis-
sions and a kind of burping sound when
attempting to send!

3Fax User guide

As one might expect, the 3Fax comes
with a clear and comprehensive manual
of approximately 200 pages. It is a mine
of information including a full list of
Hayes commands, details of the ‘S’ regis-
ters and a useful troubleshooting chapter.
It even has a section devoted to
explaining the workings of data compres-
sion and error correction. All in all this is
a very useful guide, and has provided the
answers to all my questions.

Also included in the package is a free trial
membership to CompuServe, which is
slightly at odds with the lack of a supplied
log-on script for it. Completion of the
warranty registration card entitles the
user to six months technical support via
the ‘hotline’. | have never needed it.

Summary

The 3Fax software is robust and sophisti-
cated. It offers all the functionality most
users will ever need, and the level of
configuration control is amazing. It is
easily the rival of many desktop packages
and is an impressive example of
programming, which ranks alongside
AGENDA in performance. The whole
package is so good that | now use 3Fax in
preference to the package on my PC. As
one would expect with Series 3 applica-
tions, full multitasking is retained whilst
sending a fax, allowing you to simply
continue working in other applications
while fax transmissions or modem
communications are in progress.

The single area where the 3Fax falls
down is in the data transfer rate for
modem (as opposed to fax) communica-
tions. The maximum speed of 2400bps is
extremely poor performance these days,
when low cost vfc/V34 modems are
common and run at almost ten times this
speed—to my mind there was no reason
why the 3Fax could not have the same
performance. However, this shortcoming
is not as serious a handicap that it might
appear, as no commercial off-line/on-line
communications packages (like AMEOL
and NAVCIS or WINCIM/MACCIM) exist

at present and the limited memory of the
3a generally precludes the downloading
of large amounts of data during connec-
tions to bulletin boards.

At a RRP of £199.95 including VAT the
3Fax appears relatively expensive, but
the superlative software is almost worth
the price alone. Having one’s own
personal fax certainly beats queuing for
the already overloaded office fax
machine!

Psion have done well with the 3Fax and |
can personally recommend it. As a
matter of interest, Psion have released
the 3Fax software on SSD for use with
third party modems. Unfortunately, at
the time of writing this is only available in
the USA, with no apparent plans for UK
release.

Psion users wanted in
Sussex area

One of our readers, Mr W R C Leet,
would like to meet other Psion users
in the Sussex area for discussions and
exchange of ideas. If you are inter-
ested then please contact Mr Leet at
the numbers given below:

Tel: (0424) 842014

Fax: (0424) 846003

The EMULATION Game

...or how to make your IBM-PC think it’s a Psion
Series 3 or 3a. —confused, then read on...

What is an Emulator?

An emulator is a piece of software
designed to allow programs from one
type of computer to run on another.
Emulators exist to run PC programs on
the Apple Macintosh and the
Archimedes, CP/M programs on the PC,
and so on. Thanks to Psion, two emula-
tors have been released to Series 3/3a
users... EHWIM (Series 3) and SSAEMUL
(Series 3a). These allow Series 3/3a soft-
ware to be run directly on a PC. No such
software currently exists for anything
other than the PC, although the PC
emulators can apparently be run on an
Apple Macintosh, if the Mac’ is in turn
emulating a PC! Other computers such as
the Amiga may also be able to achieve
this when using its own PC emulator,
though | cannot personally vouch for it.

Why use an emulator?

> On a fast PC, software will run
considerably quicker on the emulator
than on a Series 3/3a_ itself.
Translating a 40k program took 73
seconds on my 512k Series 3a
machine, and a mere 19 seconds on
my 25Mhz 486SxX PC.

> Using a PC keyboard and screen is a
lot more convenient than the Series
3/3a when entering large amounts of
data.

> Memory and disk space constraints
should be a lot less of a problem on
the PC, as the emulator makes use of
all the available space on your PC’s
hard disk. The Emulator can thus be
used to process files too large to
import onto a Series 3/3a.

> The emulator can be used to demon-
strate the merits of a Series 3/3a
without the expense of actually
purchasing the machine.

> You don’t need to have your Series 3a
with you in order to access your
Agenda or Data files.

> The emulators are completely free,
and are freely distributable.

History of the Psion
Emulators

The Series 3 emulator first surfaced in
1992. The Series 3a emulator was
released last year, although an ‘unstable’
version was circulated without Psion’s
consent towards the latter half of 1993.

The emulators were created by Psion’s
software development group for internal
use only, but, as an experiment, the soft-
ware was released ‘as-is’, to any inter-
ested party. It is a strictly unsupported
product, and as the text file accompa-
nying the software is clear to point out,
Psion offer no technical assistance for it.
If Psion find that their time is occupied by
queries and problems regarding the
release of the emulators, they may not
release future software in this manner.
The emulators do have certain limita-
tions, and can be quite fussy about which
machines they will run on, but the pros
far outweigh the cons, and the emulators
have proven themselves extremely useful
to a large number of Series 3/3a owners.

Limitations of the emulators

The Series 3 emulator comes with only
three of the standard Psion applications,
Time, Word and the programming
module, which will disappoint users who
wish to access their DAT or AGN files
from their PC. The Series 3a emulator
comes complete with all of the applica-
tions (except those unique to the new 1
and 2Mb machines). The Record applica-
tion is included, although the audio play-
back/record functions won’t work with
the standard PC loudspeaker.

Psion are keen to stress that, as the
internal workings of a PC and a Series
3/3a are considerably different, some
commands and functions cannot prop-
erly be emulated. For this reason, soft-
ware produced via an emulator should
not be distributed unless it has been fully

tested on an actual Series 3/3a. The fact
that software may run on a PC emulation
of the Series3/3a in no way guarantees
that it will work flawlessly on a Series3/3a
itself.

The major drawback caused by the
difference in hardware is the emulator’s
inability to ‘remember’. The contents of a
PC’s RAM (Random Access Memory) are
lost when the machine is switched off,
whereas the Psion’s internal memory is
preserved. This means that the emulators
won’t remember where they were the
last time they were switched off, nor will
they retain any of the custom settings
made by the user. Any applications you
install will be removed from the system
screen when the program is run again,
although settings can be preserved if you
make use of one of the shareware macro
programs, such as INSTAL14.ZIP.

Psion also point out that the emulators
will only run on truly IBM-compatible
PCs. The emulator is unlikely to run
successfully on DOS emulations or inside
‘DOS boxes’ such as under OS/2 or
Windows™. | am able to make the Series
3 emulator run successfully under

Windows, but have had no success with
the Series 3a version under either
Windows or OS/2. The Series 3a
emulator takes up a considerable amount
of the PC’s RAM, and unless you have at
least 4Mb available you may be unable
to run it.

Installing an emulator

Unfortunately, the installation of the
emulators is not terribly user-friendly. As
the software is unsupported, Psion have
not created an ‘install’ program, and so
the user is left to make their own adjust-
ments. The following notes, together with
the software’s text file, should help to
make installation a little easier:

Before one of the emulators can be run,
a one-off modification has to be done to
your PC’s setup. The following line must
be added to your CONFIG.SYS file:

LASTDRIVE=M

Use your normal text editing program
(such as DOS EDIT, SYSEDIT or Windows
Notepad) to make the change to your
COMFIG.SYS file, and then reboot your
machine for the changes to take effect.

| have chosen to install my Series 3
emulator into a directory called
C:\S3EMUL, and my Series 3a emulator
into C:\S3AEMUL. If you already use a
3Link to backup your Series 3/3a to your
PC you will have probably created a
subdirectory for your Psion data. For the
following listings it is assumed that your
Psion directory is called C:\PSION.

As the running of the emulators requires
the use of more than one command, |
have found that the creation of a batch
file has made use of them a lot easier. |
have created two batch files in my C:\
directory, called $3.BAT and S3A.BAT.

Most PC users should be familiar with
creating a batch file. For those unfamiliar
with this, the easiest method is to type
EDIT at the C:\> DOS prompt. This will
start up the DOS text editing program. At
the blank screen that follows, type in
your batch file, and once completed,
access the ‘Save As’ option from the ‘File’
menu. Enter the file name, i.e. S3A.BAT,
and select OK. Then exit ‘EDIT’ via the
‘File’ menu.

The batch files make use of the SUBST
command, which is used to re-route
where the emulator looks for the A:, B:
and M: drives. As a PC normally has no
M: drive, it needs to be ‘fooled’ into
believing that the C:\PSION directory on
your hard disk is actually the M: drive.

Listings for two proposed batch files
follow: note that the comments in paren-
theses are for guidance only and should
not be typed in.

Once the appropriate batch file has been
created, type in either $3 or S3A from the
C:\> DOS prompt, and you should be
greeted by a familiar sight.

When the emulator starts it will make
very frequent accesses to the floppy disk
drives and, if your drives are empty, they
can make some nasty mechanical noises.
You may decide that you want to SUBST

$3.BAT - DOS Batch file for Series 3 emulator

SUBST M: C:\PSION
CD\ S3EMUL

C:\ S3EMUL\ EHWIM. EXE
SUBST M: /D

CD\

(tell the Emulator where your Psion M: drive should be)
(Change to the directory containing the emulator)
(Run the emulator)

(undo changes before exiting)

S3A.BAT - DOS Batch file for Series 3a emulator

SUBST M: C:\PSION
CD\ SSAEMUL
C:\ S3AEMUL\ S3AEMUL. EXE

SUBST M: /D

CD\

your A: and B: drives to a less noisy loca-
tion. Inserting the following lines before
the program execution line will redirect
the floppy drives to a temporary directory
on your hard disk:

SUBST A: C:\TEMP
SUBST B: C:\TEMP

It is important to remember to un-SUBST
after using the emulator, otherwise you
will not be able to access your real PC’s
drives!

Obtaining an emulator

Both the Series 3 and 3a emulators are
freeware. They can be obtained from any
of the usual Psion shareware sources,
from CiX and CompuServe, and from the
FTP archive (for those with Internet

access). The names to look out for, are:
S3AEMUL.ZIP

Complete Series 3a Emulator (790k
approx.)

S3AEM1.ZIP
Series 3a Emulator (No text file)

S3AEMT.ZIP
Series 3a Emulator (Text file only)

S3EMUL.ZIP
Complete Series 3 Emulator (320k
approx.)

EHWIM.ZIP
Series 3 Emulator (Main file only)

S3EMUL.TXT
Series 3 Emulator (Text file only).

Competition
Results

In response to the competition in the
last issue asking for the TEN things
Psion SHOULD have incorporated into
the new 1 and 2Mb Series 3a machines,
here’s the winning entry from Paul
Lippi:

Paul says “The following suggestions
emphasise short-term improvement—
none entails new technology.”

1. A non-slip housing—perhaps the
housing ends alone could be covered
with a non-skid rubber, like that used
on the existing feet.

2. Shock resistant, water resistant,
rigid moulded plastic sleeve case
with an integral belt clip—maximal
protection while adding minimal
bulk to the present perfect form
factor.

3. A detachable wrist security strap—
for those who use their Psion while
standing.

4. Safe screen cleaning fluid.

5. A more robust serial port connec-
tion and battery ribbon cable—to
minimise soft resets.

6. A less bulky serial link—at least a
shorter cable.

7. An external headphone jack—for
learning vocal music parts on

Widget’s ‘Compose’ software without
annoying others.

8. Non-labelled application touch-
pads—this would be more elegant
than reassigning your favourite appli-
cations to touchpad buttons with
completely irrelevant icons.

9. More configurable ROM software—
quick skipping in the Spell Checker,
and more flexible browsing in the
dictionary.

10. Utility applications built into the
system ROM—applications routinely
accessed by the majority of serious
users should be built-in. Minimally
these utilities should be a macro
system, file compression, text viewer
(for files above 40K in size), a
graphics viewer and an icon editor.
They could be chosen from the best
existing shareware and freeware.

Paul Lippi
Jerusalem, ISRAEL

Paul earns two free issues added to his
subscription - Ed.

Apology
For any readers who have written in
to Palmtop but haven't yet received
a reply, then please bear with me—
I’m buried in work at the moment,
but WILL respond to you in the near
future.

Thanks - Ed.

W iL i
On The Net

The latest gossip from the Information Superhighway

Once again Pete Sipple has been
watching the discussions taking
place in the various on-line Psion
conferences. In this Issue’s ‘On the
Net’, we take a look at some exam-
ples of prompt problem solving,
what to do with a broken Series 3,
and the anticipation generated by
the imminent arrival of a new Psion
product... :

PsiWin, as reviewed in the last issue of
Palmtop, is a Windows™ based file
transfer and conversion program.
Psion’s April ‘95 Support Bulletin
stated that it would be available from
May, with advance orders being
welcomed. Until its very recent appear-
ance it’s (slightly late) arrival was
eagerly awaited...

“Having paid for and ordered my copy of
PsiWin many weeks ago (by cash in
person) | am now getting excited by the
thought of receiving it shortly. Does
anyone from Psion have any information
regarding shipping dates? | know that it
was scheduled for May/June. Is this still
the case? | keep looking out for the
postman with the package! ”

(akt @cix.compulink.co.uk)

“PsiWin sigh... Many weeks ago | sent an
order for PsiWin. When | noticed the
clause that said delivery may take 21 days
! assumed that it was a hang-over from
the three day working week in the 70's.
Has anyone received their PsiWin yet 2”

(stejohn @cix.compulink.co.uk)

“Who's going to get it first though? -
that’s the question! Whoever it is will
have to keep quiet about it or answer a
barrage of questions on what it will and
won't do. Plenty to talk about on this
forum for a week or two! The latest info
from Psion Customer Support in the UK
is that PsiWin will be launched on Friday
June 9th.

JohnRodda 100260.2231@compuserve.com)

“It might be launched, but when will it be
available?! | notice in July’s Personal
Computer World that Psion are adver-
tising PsiWin. A little premature | think.”

(lan Hunter 100125.3225@compuserve.com)

“According to SDL, one of the main
suppliers of Psion gear - it’s available from
about 23rd of June - can’t remember the
exact date, but it’s definitely towards the
end of the month.”

(Philip Andrews
100333.1733@compuserve.com)

“.. And people complain when Psion
don’t announce products ‘till they have
been on retailers’ shelves for 2 days. It
seems that you can’t win the public rela-
tions battle.”

(millar@cix.compulink.co.uk)

“Psion seems to take this approach to the
other extreme at times. | never did see an
official’ announcement of the 1Mb or
2Mb 3a on this forum prior to its launch -
as a result, by the time | placed an order
from here in Hong Kong | was months
behind on the waiting list. Come to think
of it | have never seen an Official’
marketing update from Psion. How about
it? Another possible advantage to Psion of
giving more timely information on prod-
ucts is that it might help to give your
marketing department a better indication
of potential demand - they sure got it
wrong with the 2Mb units! As for PsiWin,
| have still not seen any official announce-
ment or feature-list of this product here,
although there have been dozens of
messages about it. However | was openly
given Psion’s official glossy brochure
about the product at a recent Computer
Show out here in Hong Kong - of all
places.”

(Andrew Mallard
100010.3413@compuserve.com)

What do you call yours?

“What is the correct pronunciation for
PSION? | was originally told that the ‘P’

was silent, pronounced ‘sigh-on’.
Recently | heard someone call it ‘pee-
zeon’ which sounds reasonable too.
Anyone know for sure?”

(Colin Bosch 73043.241@compuserve.com)

“It has a silent ‘P’ (as in bath). The
pronunciation ‘sigh-on’ is correct.”

(lan Hunter 100125.3225@compuserve.com)

“My boss says that when the Psion
Organiser first came out they transposed
the ‘I’ and ‘S’ II!”

(David Kimberlin-Wye
100542.3530@compuserve.com

“>> I like the ‘I’ and ’S’ transposition
pronunciation best. << Why? - It’s a
description of what the Psion does to the
competition!”

(lan Hunter 100125.3225@compuserve.com)

“Last year, a retail salesman in the U.S.A.
claimed he was taught to say ‘Pie-zahn’
(using American phonetics, of course).
Ah, but what does it mean? Same thing as
Haagen-Dazs?”

(kenton@freenet.scri.fsu.edu)

“The rumour is that it came from ‘Potter
Scientific Instruments’ (David Potter,
Psion’s founder and Chairman-Ed), to give
the ‘PSI’ and they added the ‘ON’ ‘o
round it off into a sort of ‘word’.”

(joegriffin@cix.compulink.co.uk)

Much publicity has been made in
recent years regarding computer

viruses, malicious programs that infect
computers and spread via floppy disks,
networks, etc. Could your Series 3
become infected?

“Virus alert! That got your attention!
People keep asking me how likely it is that
a virus could appear for a Psion. | keep
saying something along the lines of ‘It
could appear, but it would be fairly easy
to defeat, so I’m not sure an author
would bother writing one’. Is this about
right 2”

(slitchfield@cix.compulink.co.uk)

“| think the consensus has been that since
the machines don’t actually boot from
anything and are running all the time, it
would be difficult to do.”

(rovoreed@cix.compulink.co.uk)

“Well, bearing in mind that any ‘virus’
would have to be masquerading in
another program first, once discovered it
would be easy to halt it spreading.
However, if some evil author did hide a
virus in an innocent looking program it
might be somewhat difficult to spot. |
wouldn’t dismiss such a thing out of hand,
but it’s unlikely that the people with the
necessary knowledge are the sort of
people who would do something like
this.”

(baldwina@cix.compulink.co.uk)

Here is a good example of the speed
at which queries can be resolved over
the ‘net’. This question received an
answer within hours...

“The emulator program. Does anybody
know how to increase the image of the
Psion screen on your PC screen?”

(Andy 100605.2131@compuserve.com)

“To configure the Emulator to change the
screen size you need to. edit
HHSERVER. PAR. Change the
SERVEWR_PARAMS -X and -Y parameters
to the size you require (640 and 480 will
make the screen fill the Monitor).”

John Boyce
100014. 1240@compuserve.com)

“John - Thanks for your advice. | can, as
you Say, now view the Psion screen image
full-width on my PC. | am new to both the
Psion and the Net, but am learning fast.
This is a great system, and to be able to
pose and answer questions like this is a
real bonus. | hope | will able to help
somebody one day. Thanks! “

(Andy 100605.2131@compuserve.com)

Another example of the instant ques-
tion-and-answer service that the ‘net’
offers for Psion users...

“Has anyone come across a screen
capture program for the 3a? | am writing
a brief article on the Psion and wanted to
illustrate it with a screenshot. | have
downloaded SCAPT.ZIP_ which was
designed for the Series 3, but it does not
cope with the better graphics of the 3a.”

(Amrit Takhar 100060.42@compuserve.com)

“Perhaps you already know that on the
Series 3a you can capture the screen by

pressing <Control-Shift-Psion-S>, and
the image will be saved as ‘SCREEN.PIC’
in the root directory of the Internal disk?”

(Dennis Lefebvre
71660. 1273@compuserve.com)

“Thanks for the tips from yourself and
Neil Bee. | have managed to get the
screen shots | wanted using your Ctrl-
Shift-Psion-S_ key combination. Using
Winlink, | then moved the SCREEN.PIC to
a directory on my PC. In this directory |
ran the converter program WSPCX to
produce the PCX file | wanted!”

(Amrit Takhar 100060.42@compuserve.com)

Of course, some queries are easier to
solve than others. Here’s an example of
the Acronym RTFM (Read the ‘Friendly’
Manual) in action...

“I’ve looked through the files and all the
other scraps of OPL examples, system
calls ,etc., yet | can’t find any call to
simply turn the Psion off in OPL, which of
course is what | need to do! Do any of
you who are wise in the ways of system
calls, etc. know of a way to do this? Your
help would be greatly appreciated.”

(address withheld)

“Erm... there’s an OPL command for
turning the Psion off. The command is
OFF x%, where x% is the number of
seconds to turn off for. I’m determined
not to say RTFM just in case you didn’t
have an FM to R!”

(kev@denali.demon.co.uk)

“Try the OPL command OFF! Sometimes
it is hard to see the wood from the trees.”

(alim@psioninc.com)

A useful tip for those who make use of
the Series 3a’s sound recording utility...

“| have a Series 3a. When | play my own
recorded samples | hear a ‘noise’ signal.
This even happens on samples without
any recorded signal. Do | need to send
my 3a for repair 222”

(dc93kkp@brunel.ac.uk)

“No. The noise is electrical interference,
probably from the DC-DC converter
power supply. If you make recordings
using external power, then that will
vanish. They’re all like that.”

(alanr@rd.bbc.co.uk)

“You'll find you get a ‘buzz’ on playback
of any sample recorded using batteries
only. Record using the mains adaptor and
there’s no problem.”

(Steve_Robson@redac.co.uk)

Following on from Nigel Wright’s
article in the last issue of Palmtop, one
technically minded Series 3 user seems
to have found the answer to the
problem of battery replacement...

“I was looking at solar cells providing 9V
up to 50mA in bright light in the Maplin
electronics catalogue. Has anyone
successfully used solar cells with their
Psion, and where did they procure the
said cells? It would save a lot on batteries
and be nicely portable.”

(arjm@dcs.ed.ac.uk)

“I have actually got a solar panel for my
Psion 3a. My local electronics shop had
picked up some surplus stock from some-
where and it included a box of 300mm
square solar panels, these were rated to
provide 12V at 200mA. | designed and
built a simple circuit using an LM7809
regulator, a Ni-Cd PP3 battery and some
other stuff to produce a stable voltage
suitable for the Psion. | have found that if
the sun is bright enough to cast even the
slightest shadow then the panel will run
the Psion, and on sunny hot days there is
even enough power left over to run a 12V
equipment cooling fan to provide a nice
cooling breeze for me and the Psion.”

(jordandc@sun.aston.ac.uk)

In the event that your Series 3 develops
a fault, machines (within the UK)
should be returned to the Psion Repair
Centre in Greenford, Middlesex. From
the messages posted on the ‘net’, it’s
clear that their repair service is prompt
and efficient.

“Broken Psions. How long do Series 3’s
take to come back from Greenford? The
icon bar on mine has died. How will |
survive? | can cope without the data - I'll
just miss the alarm clock!”

(snuffy@cix.compulink.co.uk)

“| dropped my 3a the day before going to
the U.S. on business and broke part of the
hinge mechanism - | pleaded with a very
helpful young lady on the reception at
Psion service, who told me to come down

and she’d have a word with an engineer
for me. Paul Pinnock came down when |
arrived and had me up & running inside
10 minutes. Result: Very happy and
relieved customer with life intact again.
Verdict: Can thoroughly recommend
Psion Service and Mr Pinnock!”

(zebraman@cix.compulink.co.uk)

“I managed to do a rather large drop test
on my S3a last week and broke the hinge
on one side of the lid. | sent it off and they
fitted a new case (evidently they always
replace the entire case, repairs are more
expensive). The total cost was £40 +
£3.50 for registered post, pretty reason-
able. It arrived back today, as good as
new. Eight days from my posting to its
return is quite impressive.”

(bhall@cix.compulink.co.uk)

In Palmtop Issue 2 we looked at ways
for night-time Psion users to illuminate
their displays. The suggestions keep on
coming...

“| just got hold of a Zelco ‘Long Reach
Flexible Flashlight’ and so far | like it (well,
anything at this point beats a lamp ‘held
between my teeth.) It can probably be
best described as a gooseneck lamp that
fits in your pocket. It even has a clip to
fasten on to your belt (for the Batman
utility belt look) or in your shirt pocket
(for the ever-popular ‘no this isn’t a
pocket protector’ geek look. <grin>)
Now if someone could persuade Zelco to
modify the clip to fit the Psion better, this
would be a next-to-ideal solution to our
backlight problems. (For what it’s worth,

the clip is a separate piece of plastic that
screws on.) It also helps if you‘re on
public transport late at night, as it doesn’t
disturb sleeping passengers too much. |
was on a bus out of New York city late
one night and | almost got kicked off the
bus trying to work with the overhead
light. | tried using my flashlight but still got
a lot of objections.”

(Barry Childress
73510.1420@compuserve.com)

“| think | know the type of lamp you
mean, thanks for letting me know of your
experiences with it. | actually made a
small frame with LEDs mounted on it, but
it looked way too tacky! | wouldn’t mind
clamping the lamp between my teeth, but
! worry about consuming all the black
paint that gets chipped off, oh and it
makes me drool!”

(Neil Bee 100422.1164@compuserve.com)

(I was toying with the idea of incorpo-
rating a jokes section in Palmtop, but
certain parts of ‘On The Net’ already
appear to have filled the réle nicely -
Ed.)

And finally, some feedback on Issue 2
—from our very own ‘palmtop_mag’
conference on Cix...

“Issue 2 - Got mine this morning. A very
good mix of articles, reviews, program-
ming, etc. Enough to interest the
beginner, with enough for the more
serious user. My only concern is how you
manage to maintain the quality in the
future. You have a lot to live up to!!”

(gcoxhead@cix.compulink.co.uk)

‘After reading through Issue 2, | have to
agree. | very much liked the improved
quality. The article on
JBData/DataDeLuxe/DataView was excel-
lent and gave everyone a clear idea of the
respective merits of these three. In my
opinion, it is excellent, and if supported
will get even better as people contribute
their own articles, views, etc. Looking
forward to Issue 3.”

(dagriffiths@cix.compulink.co.uk)

Pete Sipple
(psipple@cix.compulink.co.uk)

Semething to
DRAW on..

Thinking of attempting a
little artwork on your Psion?
Here’s a look at some of the
available software...

by Steve Clack

efore embarking on a discus-
B sion of drawing packages for

the Psion palmtops | must say
that these little machines are really not
the ideal platform on which to compose
artwork of any great complexity. This is
largely obvious simply by virtue of the
small screen size and lack of a mouse or
other pointing device—however the full
extent of the difficulties can only be fully
realised once you have actually
attempted to construct an illustration of
reasonable complexity for yourself. By
‘reasonable complexity’ | don't refer to
the draughting of a house extension or
even simple DIY plans. Sadly the Series
3/3a cannot hope to support that kind of
project.

The limitations of the small screen are
numerous: if you wish to draw either a
single large object or several small ones
then you are obliged to scroll endlessly
around the screen to locate the part you
are working on. In addition, positioning

of objects relative to one another
becomes difficult, as you can’t see every-
thing on the screen at once. The lack of a
mouse slows down the whole drawing
process as you then have no way to
quickly move or reshape objects. | am
generally no great advocate of the
mouse, preferring to learn alternative
keyboard shortcuts where possible.
However graphics software is one
instance where the mouse is most
certainly the most efficient way to
work—incidentally, don't laugh at the
concept of using a mouse with your $3,
as apart from the compromise to porta-
bility the whole thing is quite feasible
from a technical standpoint.

Once the possible frustrations and limita-
tions are taken into account, there are
still a number of drawing operations
where the Psions can still be of use:
particularly when creating rough
schematic drawings, little maps and
plans, drawing icons for your Psion, or

simply just for the fun of a little mindless
doodling. Provided that you go into the
selection process with realistic expecta-
tions then an appropriate drawing
package can be a very useful addition to
your software portfolio. Here are five of
the most popular programs:

Paint 2.01F

Purple Software’s Paint package is really
my initial point of reference for Series
3/3a drawing software. | purchased it a
few years ago now, before | was even
aware of the existence of useful share-
ware. | bought it not to actually create
drawings ‘from scratch’ on my Psion, but
as a means of importing Windows™
-BMP or .PCX files from my PC at work.

This was to allow me to view engineering .

drawings (imported initially from a CAD
system) or simple schematics for general
reference.

Page size
A4

varied in order to set the thickness of
lines or plotted points, but it offers no
drawing tools beyond this. In common
with most of Purple’s other graphics soft-
ware it has a basic print preview feature
to show the outline of where the picture
will appear on a printed page, and
together with its ‘sister’ program, Drawlt,
offers the most comprehensive printer
support of the entire group.

| confess that having now used all five
packages reviewed here, | will probably
continue to use Paint as always. | have no
serious requirement to draw directly on
the 3a, only to use externally created
graphics and to export 3a screen dumps
for publication in Palmtop. Paint does all
of this very well. For new users, Paint
compares poorly with most shareware
offerings costing a quarter of its price—
except in the areas of printing,
import/export, and in sheer simplicity.

Si2(Canon BJ18

¢|Canon BJ138

. General (Epson)
HP LaserJet
IBM Proprinter
Postscript

One of Paint’s main strengths—a decent set of printer options

When it comes to features, Paint is the
poor relation of the group tested here—
offering little more than simple box, line,
circle/ellipse and text tools, plus some
basic fill patterns. The ‘pen’ width can be

Palmtop Picasso 2.0d

Palmtop Picasso is not for the faint-
hearted. A complete _ installation
(including several optional components)

takes almost 200K of disk space. It also
swallows almost 100K of memory while
running.

All of this resource usage is not without
its benefits though. If you are willing to
take a little time to get to grips with
Palmtop Picasso then your efforts can
reap some real rewards. Apart from the
simple stuff such as straight lines, rectan-
gles and circles, Palmtop Picasso comes
with a complete arsenal of drawing (and
other) tools.

things. It also managed to hang the whole
machine on one occasion, forcing an irri-
tating ‘paper clip in the hole’ soft reset.
At this point | adopted the age old tech-
nique of ‘if all else fails, read the manual’,
and proceeded to wade through the
voluminous on-line help screens. These
cover more than 50 topics, and if you
take the time to digest all their wisdom
then you'll at least then be proficient with
Palmtop Picasso. As the author mentions,
some of the help topics are not

Impressive right from the start—Palmtop Picasso’s opening screen

The capabilities of ‘PP’ are not without
their price. As the supplied documenta-
tion honestly states, “It takes a while to
get to grips with how Palmtop Picasso
works. If you want Palmtop Picasso to do
something, then it probably can.” This
statement from the author, Ken Willan,
really sums up the whole package in a
nutshell. My first half hour with ‘Picasso’
was largely an exasperating experience—
without first reading the extensive on-line
help files | was constantly getting myself
into menus and options | then couldn't
get out of, and had to close down the
program every few minutes just to reset

completed in the current version, but are
a high priority for completion in the near
future.)

‘Picasso’ offers most of the drawing tools
from all the other four programs
combined. It handles circles, ellipses,
lines, triangles, polygons, parallelograms,
boxes with selectable corner radii and
silhouettes, and it gives variable line
thicknesses, a spray gun effect, numerous
fill patterns for solid objects, the ability to
skew or emboss objects for a decorative
effect, and more. This is undoubtedly the
most sophisticated of the packages

reviewed, and though | didn’t personally — Overall then, Palmtop Picasso is the most
find the user interface very intuitive it is _ difficult-to-learn of the five programs, but
nonetheless very professional looking. is also the most powerful. If you're

Q Attach Sounds

Deoenuments

Some of the extensive features of Palmtop Picasso on display

The author has quite obviously endeav-
oured to provide a program that boasts
every possible feature on a machine of
the 3a’s limited processing power, and he
has largely succeeded. The depth of this
package even extends beyond the realms
of graphic capability, with items such as
an on-screen clock, a permanent display
of free memory, and even the possibility
to attach sound or note files toa drawing. ‘Draw 2.8’ is currently in the latter stages
It also incorporates a full icon designer _ of its ‘beta’ testing programme. It is due
and a limited animation facility! for full release any time now, and has
therefore been included in this review.
Similar in operation to all but Drawlt, it
has the obligatory array of basic drawing
tools, allowing the construction of
straight lines, rectangles (boxes), circles,
ellipses (ovals), and to optionally ‘fil!’
objects with one of several selectable
patterns.

looking for a quick means to bash out a
few simple schematics then it is probably
not for you. If you have ambitious needs,
or find that your existing drawing soft-
ware is under powered, then you really
should give Palmtop Picasso a try.

Draw 2.828 (Beta version)

Though my continued efforts with
Palmtop Picasso did succeed in reducing
my frustration (and increasing my respect
for the ambitiousness of the project), |
still had it ‘bomb out’ on quite regular
occasions, requiring me to exit the
program and re-start. Though this may
have been due in part to my own partic-
ular setup and methods | always felt that Perhaps the most striking feature of Draw
Palmtop Picasso was the least ‘stable’ of 2.8 is its ease of use. In contrast with
the packages reviewed. Palmtop Picasso, | felt comfortable with

Draw 2.8 within a few short minutes of

first running it. The program is used by allowing the user to define four ‘jump’
simply positioning the cursor where you __ points on the screen, each of which can
want to start drawing, selecting the be accessed with a couple of keypresses.
desired drawing tool, using the arrow This gives a quick way of traversing the
keys to size or position the image, then screen without endless pressing of keys.
pressing ‘Enter’ to finish. My favourite All the programs allow the effective
feature is the variable-size zoom box that —_ drawing area to be larger than the actual
appears in the corner of the screen. This screen size, but only Draw 2.8 gives on-

Edit text
el <Filled from Choose from 13 font
yf clipboard Variety ats tules

Draw 2.8, and that GREAT zoom window (top right)

provides a close-up view of the area screen scroll bars to show whereabouts
surrounding the cursor, and allows on the page you are currently working.
minute and precise changes to be made
to a drawing without fuss or tedious
switching of modes. Each pixel (dot) can
be individually toggled on or off (in grey
or black) just by moving the cursor to the
desired ‘dot’ and ‘switching’ it with either
the ‘Enter’ key or the space bar. This
feature is immensely useful, is very well
implemented, and can be turned off
when not needed.

As with all the others, Draw 2.8 does
suffer certain limitations: curved lines can
only be created by ‘plotting’ them pixel-
by-pixel, or by cutting and pasting bits of
previously drawn circles or ellipses. Draw
will also not support the drawing of poly-
gons—except by manually placing indi-
vidual straight lines, which is a very slow
process.

As the author, Rick Andrews, states in the
accompanying read-me file, Draw was
conceived as a program to match the
‘feel’ of the Psion’s built-in applications,
and to be as easy to use as possible. This
ethos has really paid of, with Draw 2.8
being quick, easy and functional in

As with all other packages, cursor move-
ments across the screen can be made
either dot-by-dot with the four arrow
keys, or in larger increments by
combining the arrow keys with the
‘Shift’, ‘Control’ or ‘Psion’ keys. Draw 2.8
again scores on ease of use here, by

almost every area of its operation.
Despite the limitations of this (and the
other programs) at least with Draw you
know that ANYTHING can be done at a
pinch—by using its zoom feature to
create or modify your work a pixel at a
time.

use and features. It generally functions in
a similarly intuitive way (for me, at least)
to Draw 2.8, and adds a few extra useful
functions, such as a neat way of drawing
polygons or curved lines (Bezier curves),
by constructing them point-by-point and
defining the style of each point or node.

| Brush: Shape 1

- 2 e¢ #006
t

GLIA LAL LALA AL ALLL

As with Palmtop Picasso, Draw 2.8 does
not directly support the import and
export of anything but Psion-standard
-PIC files, but instead it cleverly interfaces
with Andrew Baldwin’s (yes-OUR
Andrew Baldwin!) FirePic utility. FirePic
comprises separate DYL (DYnamic Link
Library) files to allow the conversion
between Psion .PIC files and other
graphic formats such as Windows .PCX.
FirePic is available separately as share-
ware, and although it currently supports
only .PCX files, a number of other
conversion formats are planned for the
future.

PicPoc 2.41a

PicPoc, or PlCtures in my POCket, by
Berthold Daum, has many similarities
with Draw 2.8 in terms of both ease of

Selecting brush shapes in PicPoc

The technique takes a little effort to get
the results you require, but is an impor-
tant tool sadly lacking from all of the
other programs reviewed. On the minus
side, PicPoc has no zoom feature, which
makes very precise changes to a drawing
more difficult. It also lacks the ability to
flip or rotate a selected part of the
drawing.

Drawlt 1.00F

Drawlt, like Paint, is a creation of Purple
Software. Why would they produce two
separate drawing packages? Simple.
Because unlike every other program cn
test, Drawlt is a ‘vector’ drawing
package, rather than a ‘bitmap’ type. The
fundamental differences between the
two types are that anything ‘drawn’ with
a bitmap editor cannot later be re-edited

be,

as a single object. Thus if you create a
square box and later draw a circle in the
centre of it, there is no way to then ‘pick
up’ the circle and re-position it away
from the square. The only option with a
bitmap editor would be to ‘draw’ over
the circle to hide its presence ‘on top’ of
the square, and then to completely re-
draw a new circle in the new position.

The beauty of a ‘vector’ drawing program
is that each separate object retains its
own ‘identity’ at all times. Vector soft-
ware such as Drawit would not only
allow the circle to be freely moved rela-
tive to the square at any time, but the
circle could also be moved behind the
square too. This level of flexibility is what
serious users want, and indeed this is the

Text layout +E
=G

Drawlt’s case), they then appear on the
drawing ‘page’ ready to be positioned
and sized. All shapes can be adjusted to
any size, then stretched and pulled into a
different aspect ratio as necessary. A
rectangle can therefore be made into a
square, an ellipse into a circle and so on.
As well as objects from the ‘shape
library’, Drawlt also allows multiple
objects to be grouped into a single entity,
objects to be filled with various patterns,
object rotation in 90 degree increments,
and the creation of text within rectan-
gular ‘frames’ (much like a conventional
desktop publishing package).

Drawlt can also import .PIC files as
complete objects. This importing of files
gives the only means of working with

Style Special

Ihe quick
brown

fox jumps over
the lazy dog

The drawing package that dares to be different—Drawlt

way that all but the most basic desktop
computer-based drawing packages work.

For those familiar with Purple Software's
Flowcharting or Organisational charting
packages, FloChart or OrgChart, Drawlt
works in exactly the same way—every
object you wish to include must be
selected from the shapes available (21 in

irregular shapes from within Drawlt, as
the program will not allow direct pixel-
level editing. This is sadly a major and
overriding limitation when using Drawlt.
The built-in shapes are limited to various
rectangles, polygons, ellipses, straight and
diagonal lines, curves and arrows. If the
object you want to draw doesn’t fall into
one of these limited categories then your

only option is to create that object with
another software package and then
import it into your Drawlt file. This
further detracts from the flexibility of
Drawlt, as such imported images cannot
be re-sized in the same manner as the
standard shapes, only cropped from their
right or bottom edges.

Despite these limitations, Drawit lends
itself very well to creating simple
schematic ‘block’ diagrams in a hurry.
The ability to move and reshape objects
at any time removes the need to
endlessly ‘rub-out’ and re-work parts of a
drawing that need adjustment. The
ability to reshape text blocks and move
them relative to graphic images offers a
rudimentary kind of desktop publishing
capability. This could be particularly
useful for anyone with a 3Fax, as it should
be possible to create rather polished
looking composite pages for direct fax
transmission.

Conclusions

In summary, | would advise anyone
considering a graphics/drawing package
for their Psion computer to try out as
many of the available packages as
possible before making a decision.

Three of the five packages review are
shareware anyway, so it is easy to ‘try
before you buy’ in these cases. Space
limitations have prevented me from
going into any great detail on the full
features of the five programs, and at least
one program has been skipped
completely—notably DRAWS3A, which

offers generally similar features to Purple
Software’s Paint program, but without the
extensive printing or import/export
options. At a cost of £20 for registration
this program appeared to have little to
offer beyond the five programs reviewed
here and has therefore been omitted.

Like the comparative database review in
the last issue, there is really no obvious
winner amongst the ranks of the
programs considered. Each has its own
features and benefits, and will appeal to
different people for different reasons.

Realistically, many users will simply try
out all the shareware packages before
picking one of those. As it’s not possible
to try out either of the commercially
available programs before buying then
most people will sadly never get to try
them out first hand. These both have
their undoubtable strengths though, and
anyone with a 3Fax in particular would
be well advised to consider the DTP-like
qualities of Drawlt.

Whatever your foray into the world of
graphics and drawing with the Series
3/3a computers it is important as | have
said to have realistic expectations of the
capabilities of both the hardware and the
software. | quite expect that the creation
of graphics on handheld computers will
be a rather clumsy process for a few yeais
to come. If you have access to a full-size-1
computer for most of your graphic work
then do yourself a favour and use that
rather than your palmtop.

Happy sketching!

Comparitive performance and features - Graphics/drawing programs

Straight line drawing

Curved line drawing

Box/rectange drawing

Triangles/polygons

Circles/ellipses

Fill objects with
patterns

I\USN Ax

Multiple text fonts

Variable line
thicknesses

Dotted/dashed lines

Adjustable cursor style

|
|
|

SISPRIST SIS STS] SI 8/8

Spraygun effect

Zoomable views

Rotate/flip images

NINES PPS PES

Nix | &

Built-in icon editor

File import/export

PRICE (inc.VAT)

‘Paint’ is supplied on SSD together with ‘Compose’, a simple musical composition
program and runs on both Series 3 & 3a machines. Others run on 3a’s ONLY.
‘Drawlt’ is £34.95 on floppy disk, but can be supplied on Flash SSD for £49.95.
‘PicPoc’ is priced at $49.95 Australian Dollars plus P&P.

Printing facilities are limited on all programs, though Paint and Drawilt allow

printing to most common printer types. Users are advised to check that their
printer type is supported before purchasing any software.

Hints & Tips -(C )-

This section of Palmtop is currently »
rather undersubscribed! Surely
everyone has at least one good tip to
pass on to other readers? Anyway, in an
attempt to encourage some more
contributions for the next issue, we are
offering a FREE copy of Psion’s new
SoundMaster software (reviewed on
page 10) to the best tip for issue 4.
Please send all entries to the usual

address (see page 2 for details).

The magic cursor

Can't find your cursor in Word? Just press
Shift and the left or right arrow key to»
highlight the character next to the cursor
position—simple isn't it?

Poppy Holden
London

Navigating your Agenda

The 3a’s built-in Agenda application is
endowed with a rich set of features, and
can sometimes be a little daunting to the
beginner. Here are a few tips to help find
your way around it more easily:

If you don’t regularly use some of the
alternative ‘views’ (I rarely use the
Anniversary view), then you can use
the ‘Set up @ list’ option under the
diamond menu to remove the lesser-
used ones from the list. Once this is
done, the selected views will no
longer appear when you use the ‘@’
key to cycle through the six views.

Pressing the ‘Esc’ key will always
toggle between the current view and
the last view selected.

Hitting the space bar will always
toggle between today’s date and the
iast date selected.

Hitting the ‘Tab’ key in any view
brings up a calendar box showing the
month you are currently viewing.
Similarly, a second press of the tab
key will change this to a three month
calender, and a third press will show
the whole year on _ screen.
Alternatively, ‘Shift-Tab’ will invok>
the three month calendar and
‘Control-Tab’ will show the year

_calendar.

If you use the arrow keys to move
around the resulting calendar and
then press ‘Enter’, you will be taken

straight to the selected date in the
current view.

The ‘Home’ and ‘End’ keys will move
you forwards or backwards a week at
a time in Day and Week views, and to
the beginning or end of the selected
month when in Year view.

given time, and each one can be
independently configured. If you use
a lot of alarms to remind yourself to
take medication or for regular
appointments, then you may wish to
keep these in a separate Agenda file.
This makes them easier to view, and
you can temporarily silence them all

alendar 1995
April
S MTUTFS

November December
2

A handy calendar at the press of a button—well, three actually

In conjunction with the ‘Control’ key,
the left and right arrow keys will
move you forwards or backwards in 7
day increments while in Year view.

Pressing the ‘Delete’ key will always
erase the current entry in any view—
after first prompting you to confirm
the deletion. When deleting
repeated items you are also given the
option of removing either one or all
occurrences of the event.

If you close down the Agenda for any
reason, then be aware that only the
very next alarm will be sounded. All
subsequent alarms will be ignored
until the Agenda file is re-opened.

Remember that you can have any
number of Agenda files running at a

(apart from the next one—see above)
simply by closing down your ‘alarm’
Agenda.

As with the built-in database applica-
tion, deleted Agenda _ entries
continue to take up valuable space
until you ‘Compress’ the file using
‘Psion-K’. Get in the habit of doing
this on a regular basis to avoid your
Agenda files becoming large and
unwieldy.

Steve Clack

Planned for issue 4:

File Managers for your palmtop. Every avail-
able software package reviewed—including
Purple Software’s new offering...

Project planning on the 3a. What it is, how it
works, and a look at the software

Comparisons of the best cases, wallets and
pouches for your precious palmtop and
accessories

Would you like to read novels on your
Psion? Well you can! We look at what soft-
ware to use, and where to get the ‘books’

Reviews of the latest and best in software,
including a look at shareware on CD-ROM,
the latest version of Mapper, and more...

All this PLUS the usual features, and some
brand new ones too...

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